


the courage to love: a guide to fatherhood by felix fraldarius

by SEMellark



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Adoption, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Background Ashe/Dedue, Background Dimitri/Byleth, Background Mercedes/Annette, Developing Relationship, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Family Feels, Fatherhood, Fluff, Grief/Mourning, M/M, Permanent Injury, Post-Timeskip | War Phase (Fire Emblem: Three Houses), Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Post-War, Survivor Guilt, Time Skips, and Dad!Sylvain but we'll get there, the world needs Dad!Felix
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-05-16
Updated: 2021-02-12
Packaged: 2021-03-02 22:27:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 47,545
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24214420
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SEMellark/pseuds/SEMellark
Summary: Felix knows nothing of raising children, but that won't stop him from giving his daughter everything of which he and his peers were deprived..or: In the years following the war, the new Duke Fraldarius directs his innate tenacity toward parenthood. Those closest to him just wish Felix would show the same interest in fixing where things went wrong for him during the war.
Relationships: Felix Hugo Fraldarius/Sylvain Jose Gautier
Comments: 64
Kudos: 190





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> current location: eternally trapped in FE3H hell and perpetually wondering how sylvix would be with a daughter

In the eerie silence following the death of Emperor Edelgard, Felix hears a baby crying.

Sheathing his swords, Felix turns from where Mercedes and Annette have collapsed in a tangle of limbs and tears amidst the rubble. Someone might call after him as he limps away, but that seems distant, unimportant.

It’s difficult to follow the crying where it leads. Felix’s left eardrum is likely ruptured after a particularly well-aimed Ragnorak from an Adrestian mage, and he swings his head this way and that, quickly becoming frustrated.

“Felix!” Ashe appears at his side, gloved fingers digging into Felix’s shoulder to swing him around so they face one another. His green eyes are wide and anxious, and Felix looks away. It’s only then that he realizes they’ve made their way back to the pavilion where Dorothea had fallen, pierced by Ingrid’s lance. “What are you _doing?_ You’re injured, let Mercedes take a look at – “

Felix shrugs the archer’s hand away. “Don’t you hear that?”

“What? Hear _what_ – Felix!”

Ashe trails Felix as he picks his way through collapsed and burning buildings. He keeps his bow drawn, and it infuriates Felix. Doesn’t he understand that there’s no one left to fight? Everyone is dead, but even so, there’s just too much _sound,_ and Felix’s head throbs, his ribs groan with each step he takes, his ear won’t stop buzzing, and he can’t find whoever’s crying –

“Wait,” Ashe says, almost to himself, veering away from the path Felix is stubbornly blazing. “I think I hear it now. This way.”

They make their way to what remains of the residential district, or what Felix thinks was the residential district. He visited Enbarr only once as a child, on official business with his father and Glenn. It was one of the first times he’d left Faerghus without Dimitri, Ingrid, or Sylvain; Felix spent most of the trip sulking, and it was almost a relief when Rodrigue grew tired of his antics and sent him home ahead of schedule.

Nothing is as Felix remembers it. Only rubble remains where homes once stood. Some of the piles stretch dozens of feet above Felix’s head, and their structural integrity seems precarious. One wrong move could send everything crashing down around them, but Felix just can’t find it within himself to care. 

A baby is crying, so Felix just drops to his knees where he stands and starts digging.

“Oh, Goddess,” Ashe murmurs.

Felix grunts, clawing a headless gargoyle. “Help me.”

Together, they dig through the rubble of the closest collapsed building. Felix keeps his mind carefully blank as he works, unwilling to consider how Edelgard hadn’t evacuated the capital despite knowing they were coming. Had she been that assured of her victory, or had the power simply gone to her head, blinding her from an Emperor’s duty to their people?

Felix can’t think about it, or he’ll find himself walking the same path as Dimitri, chasing after the dead seeking a morbid facsimile of retribution.

It becomes increasingly more difficult to remain calm with each body they unearth. Ashe cries silently, his tears painting pale lines against his dirt-smeared face, but he never stops working beside Felix. The two of them set the corpses they find aside for burial, but that will have to come later.

Eventually, they find the body of a young woman. There’s no way to tell how old she is, but Felix can’t imagine that she’s any older than Mercedes, maybe even as young as Lysithea. She lies facedown, brown hair fanned out and obscuring the curve of her arms.

But the noise Felix heard was definitely that of a crying infant, so why…

When Ashe moves the woman with gentle hands, they discover the baby. It’s red in the face and covered in dust from the collapse. It’s a fucking miracle it wasn’t crushed, either by the debris or by its own mother, and Felix doesn’t even believe in miracles. Ashe props up the woman as Felix gathers the infant into his arms, and together, they sit back on the bricks and concrete and stare at the life they just uncovered.

“I can’t believe you heard it crying,” Ashe croaks, scrubbing an arm over his eyes. “We were so far away.”

“Not far enough,” Felix says for lack of anything else to add. He can’t stop staring at the baby’s dirty face, its runny nose and screaming mouth.

It’s hairless and tiny. Felix has seen his fair share of babies, and he thinks all of them are ugly and annoying.

It’s just a normal baby. So, why can’t Felix stop _looking_ at it?

He runs a gloved finger down the infant’s ruddy cheek, watching aptly as it startles and almost immediately quiets. Wet, tired eyes peer up at Felix, and they’re the starkest blue the swordsman thinks he’s ever seen.

“Felix!” _Sylvain_. Felix had lost sight of him during the fighting, but he hears his voice now, calling for him in the distance. And it isn’t Felix's imagination, if Ashe straightening up beside him is anything to go by. “Felix, where _are_ you?”

“We’re over here!” Ashe calls, struggling to his feet. “We found a survivor!”

Felix stays right where he is, running his finger along the side of the infant’s face as its eyes droop lower and lower. 

Sylvain eventually finds them, bloody and haggard but blessedly _alive,_ and as the war finally, truly ends, the babe falls asleep.

**~**

Ingrid is the first to come visit after the celebrations end. Felix is still bedridden with a fever, broken ribs, and a useless ear, but he doesn’t think to send her away when the servants announce her arrival.

Her arm is wrapped up in a sling, but she looks no worse than Felix feels as she falls into a chair at his bedside, expression pinched and eyes furious. “What were you _thinking_ ,” she asks him, “just disappearing like that?”

“I wanted to be home,” Felix replies. It’s an admission that would’ve been impossible for him a mere two weeks ago, and he trusts that Ingrid will understand. “I couldn’t stand to be in Enbarr any longer.”

“But to just leave without a word to anyone? Do you understand how that felt? Even _Sylvain_ didn’t know where you’d gone.”

Felix has spent his time on bed rest carefully avoiding thoughts of Sylvain, and he doesn’t appreciate being reminded now. “You all knew I lived,” he mumbles. “You saw me in the medical tents. Mercedes said I was completely fine.”

Ingrid breathes in sharply through her nose, but where Felix expects a tirade, all his childhood friend does is fix him with a tearful look. “Don’t do that again,” she says. “Please, Felix.”

In a distant part of his mind, Felix had known that his disappearing act would ruffle more than a few feathers. He’d left in the middle of the night _knowing_ that he would be missed in the morning, but he just hadn’t cared. Everyone was asleep, and Felix had needed to leave. He hadn’t thought about it more than that.

The two of them perk up when the sound of an infant’s cries sound through the walls. Ingrid’s stare turns incredulous while Felix shifts restlessly under the bedsheets. “You actually brought the baby here?” she asks. “Why?”

Felix is almost surprised by the question. Ingrid had been one of many who cried when Felix, Ashe, and Sylvain returned to them with a living, breathing person. They’d spent the past months killing so many of their enemies, some being former friends and classmates, and to see Felix clutching at a body that breathed had been more than most of them could handle.

“I’m the one who found her,” Felix replies. “Why wouldn’t I bring her here?”

“ _Felix._ ”

“I’ve adopted her,” he soldiers on, pointedly ignoring the way Ingrid’s mouth pops open in shock. “Or I will be. Either way, she won’t be going anywhere, so you should come around to the idea now rather than later.”

Ingrid continues to stare at him, her expression becoming increasingly more troubled. “Felix,” she says seriously, and Felix tenses, steeling himself for whatever reason she may have for why he shouldn’t have adopted a war orphan. He heard it all from the Head Servant once he returned from Enbarr, and Felix promptly dismissed him, even though he’d been employed by the family since Rodrigue assumed the title of Duke so many years ago. “Did you talk to Sylvain about this?”

Felix scoffs, turning his head to glare angrily out the window. There isn’t much he truly hates about Ingrid, but her insistence on prying into matters that don’t concern her definitely tops the list. “I don’t need to speak with him before making decisions concerning _my_ life,” he retorts. “He has nothing to do with this.”

“But you – He – “

Felix shoots Ingrid a look that has her trailing off before whatever she’d wanted to say can take form. “I don’t know about him,” he says quietly, “but I can’t keep waiting around. The war is over, and I want to move on, Ingrid.”

She seems so incredibly sad as she gazes at him, bruised and broken in all the ways he is. She knows what it means to love and lose, and it’s for that reason Felix knows she won’t keep pressing the issue. At least not now, when the wounds are too fresh. A reprieve from her meddling is all Felix can really ask for.

“So, you’re a father now,” Ingrid says instead, the tiniest wisp of a smile tugging at her cracked lips. “Is that why you look even more tired and angry than usual?”

“They won’t let me see her,” Felix grouses, rolling his eyes when Ingrid laughs at him. “Not until my fever breaks.”

“Well, of course,” Ingrid says. “Babies get sick easily, you know. And she was so _small._ I didn’t think… well, I was worried about her health, even back in Enbarr.”

Felix hears what Ingrid is hesitant to say. He’d spent that first night watching over the baby like a hawk, anxious that each shaky breath would be her last. Amidst all the chaos and death, it had seemed impossible that something as weak and defenseless as her had managed to hang on, and Felix hadn’t known what he’d find when the sun rose.

“What’s her name?” Ingrid asks curiously. “Have you thought of one?”

“I’m… bouncing between a few,” Felix says carefully. “There are a few traditional family names, but none of them seem to fit.”

“Well, you better decide soon.” Ingrid leans back in her chair, and the sly grin on her face sets Felix on edge, reminds him of all the aggravating parts of their shared childhood. “King Dimitri will want a report when I return to the capital, and I’ll need to know how to announce the new heir of Fraldarius.”

**~**

Felix’s fever breaks a few days later, and it’s another two days after that before he’s allowed to be in the same room as his daughter.

“You’ve become stingy in your old age,” he comments as Lydia brings the swaddled infant into his room. He sits up straight against his pillows and glares at the older woman when she laughs at him. She and Ingrid have always gotten along far too well. “I know you love babies, but you can’t just keep this one to yourself.”

“Forgive me, My Lord,” Lydia replies, though her voice is filled with mirth. She entered their household as his mother’s handmaiden, but she stayed on after her death to help care for Glenn and Felix. After dismissing the old Head Servant, Felix had wasted no time in appointing her to the position. She’s the best person for the job, perhaps in part to the fact that she gives Felix no quarter. “We just had to make sure you were healthy enough to see her. Parenting is hard on the body, you know.”

Felix says nothing, attention shifting to a singular point as Lydia shifts the baby into his arms. “Be gentle with the head, make sure to hold it up,” she instructs him, and Felix doesn’t even bristle at the insinuation that he doesn’t know how to hold a baby. In truth, his first time had been that day in Enbarr, and he hadn’t the mind to give much thought to his actions back then.

Stuck in his bed, he’s thought of little else since returning home. He knows almost nothing about children, and he’d wondered how he would possibly hold her outside of a war zone. Would she cry? Would she remember him? In his worst moments, Felix had even wondered if she would associate his presence with the most traumatic moment of her impossibly short life.

But as she settles in his arms, Felix thinks only of how much she’s grown in the weeks since he saw her last. Her little mouth opens in a yawn, but she’s otherwise wide awake. Her eyes are as blue as Felix remembers, and she looks around curiously, attentive of the world around her.

Felix lifts a finger to her cheek, and without the fabric of his gloves between them, he marvels at how _soft_ her skin is. He doesn’t think he’s felt anything quite like it, and he’s so mesmerized by the look and feel of her that he doesn’t even flinch when she reaches up and yanks on a lock of his unbound hair.

“Have you thought of a name, Felix?” Lydia asks him, standing attentively at his bedside. She’s the only servant in the household who’s ever called him by name, and for the first time in his life, he finds himself _grateful_ for that fact. “We can’t call her ‘the little miss’ forever.”

Felix supposes he’s waited long enough. He’d lied to Ingrid before when she’d asked, because while Felix never _truly_ saw himself having children, he’d always been set on potential names. Just in case.

“Josephine,” Felix says. He really should start on that letter to Ingrid. “Josephine Frances Fraldarius.”


	2. Chapter 2

Felix spends the next few weeks confined to the Fraldarius estate. If he isn’t spending time with Josephine, he’s sorting through letters in his father’s old office, sifting through the ones that were sent prior to Rodrigue’s death and tossing the ones inked with his own name.

There can be nothing that important addressed to Felix. Due to his refusal to reach out to Dimitri, he hasn’t officially taken over for Rodrigue, and as far as anyone knows, the Dukedom is in a perpetual state of limbo. Even so, Felix doesn’t hear word of border skirmishes or uprisings, and Lydia assures him that the neighboring villages are doing fine with the funds and supplies allotted to them during the war.

She doesn’t say he has time to make a decision in so many words, but Felix understands regardless.

He’s introduced to Josephine’s wet-nurse, a refugee woman from southern Alliance territory named Elizabet. She smiles often and is easy to get along with, though Felix doesn’t think she intends to stay once Josephine is weaned. From what he’s heard from Lydia and the other servants, Elizabet lost her husband and child during the last few months of the war, and she plans to use the money she earns in Faerghus to start a new life in Almyra, where her husband’s family is from.

Felix can’t help but feel awkward around her, for once careful of saying the wrong thing, but Elizabet handles his fumbles with grace and helps Lydia teach him the basics of caring for an infant.

For all their help and advice, Felix is still restless. Too many nights he jumps out of bed at the first sounds of his daughter whimpering from the next room. She has to eat every three hours or so, Elizabet explains to him, and the woman is gentle in her assurances that he needn’t come running every time Josephine makes as much as a peep.

It’s not as if Felix can tell Elizabet that he’s almost always awake, plagued by thoughts of the war that took her family, so he says nothing. After a while, Felix’s presence becomes at least moderately necessary, because while Josephine is comfortable with and knows Elizabet, she sleeps easiest in Felix’s arms.

Their routine becomes a trade-off of sorts: Elizabet feeds Josephine before handing her off to Felix and returning to her own quarters. Sometimes Felix will take Josephine back to his room, but usually he sits in the antique rocking chair in the nursery and spends the rest of the night there, sleeping fitfully. When morning comes and Lydia inevitably happens upon him, she gives her usual scolding about how he won’t be young forever and can’t keep treating his back as he does, but Felix only has one ear to listen with, now.

Despite the constant activity Josephine brings, Felix’s life has become almost idle, and he waits for that usual restlessness to take hold of him. Back at the Academy, Felix couldn’t sit still for long without heading to the training grounds, and even when he made the rare trip home, he’d spend it in the courtyard, practicing techniques on the dummies Glenn made for his own training.

But it never comes. Weeks go by, and only rarely does Felix think about his swords, placed on mounts in the office. He finds himself staring at them when he should otherwise be going through paperwork, but Felix doesn’t feel the urge to take them into his hands or clean them daily as he once did, leaving it to the servants instead.

He’s aware that he’ll become sloppy if he doesn’t practice, but Felix just can’t bring himself to care. Swordsmanship stopped being a point of pride for him shortly after the fall of Garreg Mach. It became a means to an end, and after five years, Felix is all too happy to set his swords aside for a time.

It’s just too easy to forget about all of that when his daughter demands so much of Felix’s attention. Josephine hates being in the house during the day. If she’s in any room with a window, she’ll cry and cry until Felix or one of the servants takes her outside, and nothing short of food or sleep will distract her. Felix hasn’t spent so much time on their land since he was a child, and he develops a certain fondness for sitting with Josephine underneath the apple tree near the stables.

She loves to watch the horses as the stable hands take them out to pasture, and Felix bemoans the day she starts walking; he’ll probably never get her inside again. Sera, the daughter of the oldest stable hand, notices Josephine’s fascination and always stops by with one of the older, calmer mares.

“Will you teach her to ride, My Lord?” Sera asks. She reminds Felix of Annette, with her boundless energy and cheer. Her hair is a darker red and is often bound in a braid, and like with Felix, Josephine won’t hesitate to yank on it if Sera gets close enough. “When she’s older?”

“Perhaps,” Felix says, although he sincerely doubts it. He never enjoyed riding, wasn’t all that skilled at it. That was more Sylvain’s and Ingrid’s territory. If it weren’t for Josephine’s apparent interest in them, Felix probably would’ve just sold off most of the ones his father collected over the years. “I may just leave that to you.”

Sera gives him an odd look, though she’s quickly distracted by Josephine’s delighted shriek as the mare leans down to sniff her. There’s no use in telling Josephine anything, not when she’s this little, but Sera still says, “Gentle, Little Miss, be gentle,” when she swats at the mare’s nose with her tiny hands.

“My father would be a better teacher,” Sera continues. “He’s worked with horses all his life and would be more than happy to work with the Young Mistress.”

Felix makes a vague noise of acknowledgement but says nothing. He doesn’t really care who teaches Josephine to ride, if she does end up wanting to learn. For a moment, his mind wanders to Sylvain, but Felix cuts that train of thought short before it can truly take root.

More than anything, Felix just can’t picture the infant in his arms being old enough to ride a horse. Felix will do his utmost to make sure she lives that long, but for now, she’s small and safe in his arms; Felix is content with that.

~

Halfway through Wyvern Moon, nearly two moons to the day Enbarr fell, Felix notices a letter on his desk emblazoned with the Gautier crest. He can practically feel his blood beginning to burn as he stares at it. The chances of it being Sylvain are low – if Sylvain didn’t reach out to him within a month of the war ending, then he probably isn’t going to – but it’s not like Felix wants to hear from the Margrave either.

Despite their sons’ persisting friendship, Felix’s father and Sylvain’s were never really on the best of terms. Rodrigue had major issues with how Miklan was treated, but he never had the spine to say anything to the Margrave’s face about it. And Felix always suspected that the Margrave begrudged his father for having two Crest-bearing sons that didn’t stray from their intended paths – or at least not outwardly, in Felix’s case.

Misguided though he was, Felix still respects his father, and he doesn’t want to read performative condolences from a man who was never a father a day in his life.

Felix grabs the letter opener the way he would a sword, stabbing it through the letter’s thin edges with precision. Josephine sleeps in her cradle beside his desk, occasionally snuffling and drawing Felix’s attention from his work. It’s rained almost nonstop for the past three days, and she’s been a downright terror to keep occupied. She’ll probably be waking up to eat within the hour, but Elizabet knows Josephine’s feeding schedule better than he does, so she’ll come find them soon enough.

With hands that barely tremble, Felix unfolds the parchment and begins to read.

_My dearest Felix,_

Felix has to lean back in his chair and take a few deep breaths before continuing. Fucking Sylvain and his horrible timing. What could he _possibly_ have to say at this point?

_I hope this letter finds you in good health. I must admit, you weren’t looking your best the last time I saw you, but apparently you were well enough to steal away like a common thief. I know you passed your certifications for that, but I wasn’t aware of how skilled you are at running away._

It takes every ounce of Felix’s willpower not to rip the letter to shreds. Reading his words like this is just the same as hearing his voice for Felix, and thus his aggravation is as if Sylvain were in the room. Sylvain’s sheer audacity hasn’t changed in all the time they’ve known one another, and Felix both loathes and adores that about the man.

_Would it have killed you to say something? If not to me, then at least to someone? I’m sure Ingrid told you how I nearly tore apart every medical tent searching for you the next day. I’m perfectly capable of making an ass of myself without your influence, thank you very much, so a heads up would’ve been much appreciated._

She had not, though Felix doesn’t doubt it would’ve come up once she got over her change of heart in regard to sparing Felix’s feelings.

_I know you’re probably foaming at the mouth at this point, so I just want you to know that my purpose in writing this letter isn’t to torment you. At least not too much. No one has heard from you since you left, and while I’m sure it’s because you’re off doing your lone wolf thing, I can’t help but worry. I’m not sure whether I hope you’re safe in Fraldarius territory or out chasing down Adrestian loyalists like Leonie and Ferdinand are. They say they haven’t seen you, and I’m inclined to believe them. Ferdinand couldn’t keep a secret if you paid him._

Felix probably knows that more than anyone still living. He’d spent so long mistrusting Ferdinand following Edelgard’s betrayal, even though he hadn’t hesitated in siding with the Professor and abandoning his Adrestian noble title. Ferdinand was forthcoming about everything he knew regarding Edelgard, Hubert, and Adrestian war tactics, and more than once, Felix had thrown it back in his face, claiming that anyone who could betray their friends and country so easily was inherently untrustworthy.

Ferdinand took Felix’s scorn without complaint, and over time, Felix had come to regret how harsh he’d been. In the years before the Professor’s return, he and Ferdinand had even become friends of sorts, and Felix could say that about very few people outside of the former Blue Lions.

_If you’re at home, then that just means you’re ignoring everything, which is fine. I know how you are. I decided to give you space, but you’re my best friend, Felix, and I miss you dearly. We spent so long fighting side by side during the war, and I keep finding myself expecting you to be there when I turn around. And I know, that’s definitely my problem and not yours. I’ll get over it eventually, but I reserve the right to miss you in the meantime!_

The problem is that Felix doesn’t want Sylvain to get over it. In a perfect world, Sylvain would be allowed to miss him, and Felix would take the same liberties. But things aren’t perfect, can never _be_ perfect, and it’s for the best if they put a stop to whatever codependent tendencies they developed during the war.

_I wasn’t sure whether or not to mention this, but I tried to find out what happened to that baby you and Ashe found. I spent hours asking around before leaving Enbarr, but no one had seen it. I even tried checking the death records Lysithea and Ingrid started up, but there was nothing about any infants. Annette said maybe a family member had been found, and I’d really like to believe that. You’re probably skulking around and pretending not to worry about it, so I’m sorry that I couldn’t find any information for you. But I’m sure everything worked out! The kid was lucky enough to have you looking out for it, so I’m sure that luck will keep holding out._

Felix slides his gaze over to Josephine, who’s still sleeping peacefully. Either Ingrid managed to keep her mouth shut, or word hasn’t yet reached Sylvain about Felix’s impromptu decision to adopt. Something in Felix’s chest unclenches at the knowledge that Sylvain doesn’t know, but he knows it won’t last.

_Anyway, I won’t bore you with the details about my life back home. The old man’s been getting on my nerves, but that won’t change until he finally keels over. One can only hope, I guess. Dimitri said something about all of us gathering at Garreg Mach once reconstruction is done, and I better see you there, or else I’ll send Ingrid after you._

_Answer a letter for once, you jerk._

_Yours,_

_Sylvain_

Felix carefully folds the letter before tossing it to the edge of his desk. It doesn’t fall, just balances precariously on the edge, and Felix purses his lips to blow air at Sylvain’s letter until it flutters out of his line of sight.

Propping his chin up in his hand, Felix turns to stare out the window. He watches droplets of rain slide down the glass and listens to the pattering on the roof. Josephine sleeps on, unperturbed.

The years have changed Sylvain very little, Felix muses. He’s still an infuriating bastard who ignores a problem until its staring him dead in the eye. The war is over, and yet here he is, complaining about the same old things, making the same old declarations.

Sylvain might be fine with continuing the charade, but no matter how much he wishes otherwise, Felix just doesn’t have the patience anymore.

**~**

The next piece of correspondence from an old friend comes in the form of a wedding invitation. A royal courier comes to the estate as one so often did in the past, but now Felix is the one who has to receive it.

Felix has an inkling as to just whose ceremony he’s expected to sit through, but he still isn’t quite prepared to read the details of the upcoming union of the King of Faerghus and the newly ordained archbishop of the Church of Seiros. “So much for a long courtship,” Felix says to Josephine, and her unintelligible babble is some comfort.

Dimitri’s infatuation with their professor was no secret among the students of Garreg Mach. But like most things, Felix had assumed that love dead after the events of the war. When his old friend eventually came back to himself, Dimitri spent most of his time avoiding Byleth, likely consumed by guilt over his behavior, and Felix had resolved not to care about their sham of a relationship.

But things have obviously changed in the four moons since Felix last saw them. Felix isn’t exactly pleased at having to make the trek to Fhirdiad during the winter season, but in the privacy of his own home, Felix can gradually settle into the relief he feels over things having worked out for his childhood friend and former teacher.

The problem therein – much to Felix’s eternal discomfort – is figuring out what to wear. He’d show up in his battle attire if left to his own devices, but Lydia refuses to let him “make a mockery of the Fraldarius Dukedom,” as if the other noble houses haven’t been making a mockery of themselves for _years._

“We still have your father’s old evening attire from his days at the Academy,” Lydia informs him. “Back then, he was about the size you are now. They should fit with a few alterations.”

“Absolutely not,” Felix retorts, sitting cross-legged in the middle of his bed with Josephine propped up in his lap. “That get-up is hideous. I never wore my own at the Academy, and I’m certainly not starting now.”

Most of the clothing and personal effects Felix owned prior to the war were likely destroyed during Edelgard’s initial strike on Garreg Mach, and anything that remained was looted by bandits over the ensuing years. Felix doesn’t exactly mourn the loss, but trust whatever forces are at work in the world to deny him even this small mercy.

“Well, the clothing Rodrigue wore for matters of the court is still in his room,” Lydia counters. “We could alter them to your measurements or have a similar set commissioned.” She approaches the bed, then, and Felix glances up at her curiously. She isn’t looking at him, instead watching Josephine slobber over her own fingers, but something about Lydia’s expression strikes Felix as melancholic. “But you’ll have to make a decision soon, Felix. The ceremony is in a moon’s time, so we don’t have a lot of options.”

Felix is aware, though he won’t say as much to Lydia’s face. He supposes it would be easiest to alter his father’s wardrobe to fit him, but the idea of pulling everything from the dark stillness of the master bedroom makes Felix’s stomach turn. “Have my own set commissioned,” Felix says eventually. “I’ll pay whatever is necessary to have it done before I leave.”

Lydia nods, dark eyes sliding up to meet Felix’s with a sudden air of mischief. “A tailor will have to come to the manor and take your measurements,” she says pointedly, to which Felix groans. “Do you think you can stand still for that long?”

“If I must.”

Lydia shakes her head with a low laugh. “I suppose we’ll have to worry more about the Young Mistress. If she’s anything like you were as an infant, the tailor will certainly be leaving with a headache.”

Felix frowns, gathering his daughter closer to him. “What does Josephine have to do with this?”

The look Lydia shoots him is reminiscent of how she’d regard him in the past whenever she was explaining something to Felix she thought he should already know. “You’ll be leaving her here then? You may be in the capital for a while. Royal weddings don’t come around too often.”

Admittedly, Felix hadn’t considered Josephine in all this. His instinct is to leave her here, where she’ll be safe and well cared for, but the idea of actually _leaving_ her is utterly repulsive to him. “Could she survive the journey in the cold?” he demands.

“If you take the carriage,” Lydia replies evenly, though she’s perfectly aware of Felix’s feelings on that blasted thing. “And bundle her up. But she should be fine. She’s much stronger than she was when you brought her here.”

Felix glances down at Josephine, and as if sensing his gaze, her blue eyes shift up to him. She starts up her babbling again, removing a hand from her mouth to wave it in Felix’s face. “I suppose… I’ll have to present her eventually,” Felix says at length. “This will be as good a time as any.”

“I’m sure His Majesty will appreciate the gift,” Lydia laughs, and isn’t _that_ a marvel, hearing her refer to Dimitri as such when she’s scolded the pair of them for misbehavior more times than Felix cares to recall. “Our Miss Josephine will certainly steal the show.”

“She doesn’t even have hair,” says Felix, and Josephine manages to catch him in the nose with her spit-soaked knuckles.

“Careful.” Lydia turns to leave the room while Felix wipes furiously at his face. “It won’t be long before she’s hanging off your every word.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Felix mumbles, falling back against his pillows. Josephine shrieks as she goes down with him, but Felix has since learned to determine between her various noises and knows this to be one of delight.

Felix stares up at the ceiling as Josephine settles against his chest. Dimitri and Byleth are getting _married,_ and he received an invitation. Felix, who ran off after their biggest victory without a word. Felix, who since hasn’t reached out to a single soul besides Ingrid.

Knowing his friends, they’ll take one look at Josephine and excuse Felix’s absence. And for some, inexplicable reason, that simple fact makes Felix feel impossibly alone.


	3. Chapter 3

Felix arrives in Fhirdiad the morning before the ceremony. He hadn’t anticipated how often the carriage would have to stop due to Josephine’s inconsolable crying, though he supposes he could’ve just told the driver to soldier on despite his daughter’s discomfort. He hadn’t, however, so the entire castle staff are beside themselves when Felix—the probable next head of the Fraldarius Dukedom—shows up later than every other guest _and_ with an unexpected plus one.

They’re put up in a wing of the castle once reserved for Rodrigue and Glenn. Felix hasn’t been in the rooms since he was a young boy, and part of him wants to insist on taking up elsewhere, perhaps in some inn on the outskirts of the city. But he knows Dimitri would never allow it, so he keeps his reservations to himself when an attendant escorts him to the old Fraldarius rooms.

“We will have a cradle sent up along with the rest of your baggage before this evening’s dinner,” the man tells him, seeming harried. He must be new, because he can’t keep the surprise of seeing Felix with an infant in his arms out of his expression. Felix, who’s grown used to such stares over the months, ignores his lack of tact. “In the meantime, His Majesty and his guests are taking breakfast in the parlor. We’ll have something made and brought down for you within a half hour. Should we prepare something for the child as well?”

“She’s already eaten. I’ll make my own way to the parlor,” Felix says in dismissal, and the attendant bows to him before quickly leaving the room.

Josephine smacks his chest as Felix loiters in the room. She’s at the point where she prefers to sit up on her own rather than be held. The only thing that stays a tantrum is when they’re in the process of moving somewhere, so that, more than anything, ultimately forces Felix out of his room and toward the parlor.

Felix spent most of the trip mentally preparing himself for his friends’ reactions to Josephine. Mercedes, Annette, and Ferdinand will be all over her, certainly. Dimitri will probably take offense to not having already been told, though that predicates on Ingrid having kept her silence, which Felix doubts. Ashe will most likely be beside himself since he was with Felix when they found her, and Dedue gets soft around children in a way he usually only is with Ashe. Byleth could react in any number of ways, truly, and Sylvain…

Felix has tried not to think about it. He still isn’t used to not knowing what Sylvain will do in any given situation. It was easier back in their Academy days, when Sylvain rarely deviated from the script he’d written for himself. The war threw all of that out the window, and Felix quickly found that he couldn’t predict Sylvain in the same way he hadn’t predicted Edelgard’s betrayal.

Even so, Sylvain had made his opinion on children very clear in the past. What he’ll say once he spots Josephine drooling on the collar of Felix’s shirt is anyone’s guess. But before he can think himself into never leaving this wretched room, Felix gathers up Josephine, slings one of her blankets over his shoulder, and makes for the parlor.

Felix takes his time. The castle is a flurry of activity, servants running around this way and that with crates and bundles of whatever has been deemed necessary for a royal wedding. They still make sure to stop and move to the sides of the halls when they cross Felix’s path, dipping their heads to him and only resuming in their tasks once he’s made his way past them. It makes Felix’s skin crawl, but he says nothing to discourage such behavior towards him, knowing that it would be useless.

When he’s finally a few doors down from the parlor, the first thing Felix hears is Annette’s ringing laughter. It’s such a familiar sound, one that Felix hasn’t heard in so long, and he pauses outside the door, just to listen. She sounds… different with only one ear, though Felix doesn’t know how that could possibly be.

“Ba!” Josephine shrieks, and Felix quickly pushes into the room before he can be caught loitering.

Felix has never known the castle’s parlor to be used for meals, and that becomes apparent when he takes in the state of his friends. Anyone not taking up space on the couch or limited chairs is on the floor, holding plates of eggs, meats, and toasted breads on their laps. Felix takes all this in without locking eyes with anyone in particular, although he can feel all their gazes on him.

“What the hell,” Sylvain says first, and Felix meets his wide-eyed look with one of this own, because there’s a _scar_ running down the right side of his face, one he definitely did not have the night before Felix left Enbarr. “That’s… a baby.”

“That’s _the_ baby!” Annette exclaims, setting her plate down on the plush rug in front of her and scrambling to her feet. “You took her with you and didn’t tell any of us? _Felix!”_

Her tone is vaguely accusing, and Felix utters a distracted, “Uh, sorry,” because he wants to know what happened to Sylvain but doesn’t know how to ask.

Annette descends on him, barefoot and hair unbound although she’s wearing one of her favorite white and blue dresses. She takes Josephine’s tiny wrist gently between her fingers and shakes it, cooing, “Hello there, precious darling.”

“Welcome, Felix,” Dimitri says from the couch. Byleth and Ingrid sit on either side of him, watching Felix with nearly identical, _knowing_ smiles on their faces. Felix narrows his eyes at Ingrid, who only shrugs and takes a bite of sausage. “You certainly know how to make an entrance.”

“I’m only a few days late,” Felix replies, as if that’s to what Dimitri was referring. “The journey was… drawn out unexpectedly.”

“I wonder why,” Byleth comments.

“Can I hold her?” Annette nearly begs, and Felix passes Josephine off to her without really thinking about it. He remembers himself almost as soon as Josephine’s warmth leaves him, but his daughter doesn’t so much as wail as she’s handed over to a stranger. In fact, it barely takes any time at all before Josephine has both fists buried in Annette’s hair.

“Gentle,” Felix says reflexively. “Sorry, she likes to grab.”

“It’s okay, it doesn’t hurt,” Annette assures him, settling Josephine into the crook of her arm before making her way back to her spot on the floor beside Mercedes and Ferdinand. “Look, Mercie, she’s so _cute._ ”

Mercedes lifts a hand to her mouth as she finishes chewing her food, and when it falls, her smile is blinding. “She has certainly grown a lot since we saw her last,” she says, reaching out to take Josephine’s wrist just as Annette had. “Hello, little one. I’m sorry, I don’t have as much hair for you to grab.”

“Look out, Ferdinand,” says Sylvain, and _Goddess,_ hearing his voice really is different than the auditory hallucinations Felix gets when he reads his letters. “You’re probably next.”

“She has a penchant for red-heads,” Felix adds, probably unhelpfully. “She does the same thing to our stable hand.”

Ferdinand laughs, and that’s another sound Felix finds that he’s missed. Laughter from Ferdinand in the years following his flight from Adrestia was about as common as Felix’s time spent out of the training grounds. The bruises under his eyes have seemingly faded, and he seems genuinely content as he leans over Mercedes to get a better look at Josephine.

“I would be more than happy to serve as a proxy in that case,” Ferdinand says. “It must be so hard to be so young in such an unfamiliar place. If it will provide any sense of normalcy, we will gladly lend our hair, won’t we, Annette?”

“Of course,” Annette says sagely, tilting her head into Josephine’s next tug. “I would do anything for her.”

Felix sighs. “You’ve only met her twice.”

“ _Anything_.”

“You three don’t look too surprised,” Sylvain comments, staring at Ingrid. “I see we’ve all been keeping secrets.”

“I visited Felix a few months ago after he disappeared from Enbarr,” Ingrid replies evenly. “I made a report to Dimitri and Byleth when I returned, so we’ve known about Josephine for some time.”

“Josephine?” Ashe echoes, speaking for the first time. His expression is quietly fond as he watches Annette fussing with Josephine. “Is that her name? How did you find that out?”

“I named her myself,” Felix says, realizing that the others haven’t quite connected the dots just yet. “She’s… well, I’ve adopted her. As my daughter.”

Sylvain coughs suddenly, though it’s largely ignored in favor of Annette’s and Ferdinand’s delighted gasps. “Oh, Felix,” Mercedes says gently. “That’s wonderful. I’m so happy for you.”

Felix nods but says nothing, realizing he’s just been standing in the same spot by the door the entire time. He moves further into the room, stepping around the pile of dirty plates on the floor and making his way over to Annette, Mercedes, and Ferdinand. He lowers himself to the rug beside Annette, and he’s all too aware of Sylvain sitting upright in the chair just to his left.

“Where’s Dedue?” he asks before his friends can offer more congratulations that he doesn’t know how to accept. “I’ve never known him to sleep in.”

“He’s helping with some last-minute preparations,” Byleth explains. The Archbishop sits cross-legged on the couch with one knee resting on Dimitri’s thigh. Felix finds himself trying to imagine Rhea doing such a thing and shakes his head to banish the thought. “We couldn’t talk him out of it.”

“He’s taking this wedding very seriously,” Ashe says with a small chuckle. “He’ll only get to marry His Highness off once, so it has to be perfect.”

“It will be perfect regardless,” says Dimitri, and Felix waits for a rush of annoyance within himself that never comes. “I wish he would take some time to relax. He’s been helping with restoration efforts here and at Garreg Mach all these moons. I’d hoped the wedding would be an excuse for him to take some time to himself.”

 _Like that will ever happen,_ Felix thinks, but he startles when he feels the gentle press of Sylvain’s boot against his knee. “Have you eaten, Felix?” Sylvain asks, so quietly Felix has to turn his head to hear him properly. “I can go find a servant if you haven’t. They’ve pretty much left us alone, so I don’t think they’ll be coming by anytime soon.”

“The man who showed me to my room said they’d bring something for me within the hour,” Felix replies. “I can wait.”

Sylvain smiles, and it’s such a small, easy thing that Felix is almost distracted from the scarring. “What about the little miss? You can’t tell me she eats solid foods when she doesn’t even have hair.”

“She has _some,_ ” Felix retorts. “And she’s already eaten. But she’s six months old, Sylvain, of course she’s eating solid food.”

“You say that like I’m supposed to know anything about babies.”

Felix scoffs, though there’s no chance of him bringing up the fact that _he_ hadn’t known much about Josephine’s dietary needs before Elizabet explained them to him. “I don’t assume anything where you’re concerned.”

“Aaand there he is,” Sylvain chuckles. “And here I was thinking fatherhood may have softened you.”

“Oh, it definitely has,” Ingrid cuts in to say. “You should’ve seen him during my visit.”

“Oh, yeah, thanks for reminding me of my list of grievances against you, Miss ‘No Sylvain I Haven’t Heard From Felix Either.’”

“I hadn’t! You think he would’ve spoken to me if I didn’t go there myself?”

“Well, now we see why he was so busy,” Ashe comments. “Babies are a lot of work, not to mention all the cleanup from the war.”

“ _I_ think he was just keeping her to himself,” Annette grumbles, seemingly to no one in particular. “Stingy.”

Felix rolls his eyes, though Josephine chooses that moment to decide that she’s had enough of Annette and reaches out for Felix. He takes her back without a word, cradling her as he would if he were trying to get her to fall asleep. She usually naps after her breakfast, though the stress of the past few days has probably thrown her off her schedule. She’s wide awake as she stares up at Felix, waving a hand in his face. “Ba!” she gurgles at him.

“Yes, yes,” Felix says, pulling her blanket down off his shoulder to gently tuck it around her. “There are so many new people for you to harass.”

“Her eyes are so _blue_ ,” says Sylvain as he leans against the arm of his chair to peer down at Josephine. The movement draws her eyes from Felix to Sylvain, and she observes the man quietly, kicking her legs against the blanket’s lavender fabric. “They almost match the Fraldarius colors.”

“It was truly meant to be,” Mercedes says, while Felix is left wondering how much of Sylvain’s interest is genuine. “I’m so incredibly relieved you were the one who found her that day, Felix.”

Annette and Ferdinand make quiet noises of agreement, but silence envelopes them all soon after. It isn’t awkward or disconcerting, just… reverent. Peaceful. Everything they lacked over the course of five years.

 _Yes,_ Felix thinks. _I am as well._

~

The next day, Felix takes great pains to tire out Josephine before the ceremony. He takes her down to the royal stables with Ferdinand and ends up caught between Leonie and Lysithea, who demand to know why they weren’t informed of Felix’s recent adoption. The two take turns cooing over Josephine, who—with horses nearby—can’t be bothered to show even a hint of interest toward them.

Only once the excitement has caused Josephine’s eyes to droop does Felix make his way back to his rooms. He settles Josephine in the provided cradle and dresses himself first, donning the regalia of turquoise and navy he’d had commissioned weeks before. It had ended up looking too much like Rodrigue’s for Felix’s liking, and he takes care to avoid the room’s many mirrors when he sets to work on Josephine.

She’s easier to fix up, thanks in part due to her lack of hair. Felix doesn’t have to spend the same amount of time he’d taken on his own, instead gently sliding a blue headband with white flowers embroidered along the edges onto her head. Lydia had insisted upon it, saying it would complement the dress and booties they’d made to match Felix.

Josephine doesn’t wake during the entire process, and Felix takes a moment to look at her, decked from head to toe in Faerghus and Fraldarius colors. He wonders… what the woman he and Ashe found would have thought. If she’d balk at the idea of her daughter representing an enemy nation in any fashion. Maybe she wouldn’t care at all.

“When did I become the type to think about these things?” Felix murmurs, but of course, Josephine offers no reply.

The ceremony itself is… tolerable. Felix finds himself sandwiched between Sylvain and Ingrid, representing the major noble houses of Faerghus. Mercedes and Annette stand behind them, and Felix can almost imagine Annette making faces at Josephine as she peers quietly over Felix’s shoulder.

For all that Josephine had stolen the attention the previous day, the sight of Dimitri and Byleth standing together is impossible to look away from, even for Felix. Dimitri looks every bit the regal king he refused to be for years, and Byleth appears so eerily similar to Rhea, dressed in an outfit more reminiscent of the Archbishop’s attire than a wedding gown. Their eyes never leave one another for even a second, and Felix finds himself drawn to the look of pure adoration on Dimitri’s face.

For so long, Felix never thought he’d see Dimitri make an expression like that again. There was always something sinister lurking beneath the surface of the man’s eyes, and Felix had once written the boy he’d grown up with as lost. But then Byleth came, and as much as her eventual disappearance had pushed Dimitri over that final precipice, she ultimately returned to save him, along with the entirety of Fódlan.

The Kingdom and Alliance have all but abdicated as major political powers, represented only by the presence of fallen or weakened nobles in the crowd. Ferdinand, Hilda, Lysithea, and so many others are here to show their support, but Felix wonders about the others. This wedding is the first opportunity for various noble houses to demonstrate their allegiances, but how much of it will extend beyond the honeymoon period?

Josephine snuffles quietly in Felix’s arms, rests her face in the crook of his neck, and Felix resolves not to think of such things. Sylvain and Ingrid are at his side as they have always been, and Dimitri is finally beginning to live for himself. That is more than his fifteen-year-old-self had dared to hope for, and it will just have to be enough for now.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry for the break between updates, I've recently gotten into BTS and uh... well, let's just say I have suddenly lost the ability to prioritize

Felix reaches the end of his patience early into the reception, after the seventh or so random person asks if they can hold Josephine. Once alcohol becomes involved, those who’d initially been too timid to approach Felix quickly abandon their reservations. A baby, it seems, is enough to make the members of Faerghus’ high society lose their minds.

Hilda and Ferdinand take it upon themselves to field the nobles and their wives before Felix can lose his temper with them. The two can talk in circles endlessly, and under the guise of Hilda’s coy smile, hidden behind her red paper fan, and Ferdinand’s charmingly distracting pleasantries, Felix is finally able to slip away for a moment of peace.

How many times during his youth did he do this same thing, taking shelter in the shadows of the ballroom’s balcony while Sylvain, Ingrid, and Dimitri played the social climbing games expected of them. Felix wanted nothing to do with it, and no amount of lecturing from Rodrigue or pointed looks from Glenn could coax him into playing nice with Faerghus’ elite.

Felix takes a deep breath, allowing the night air – made less frigid by carefully placed heating spells along the balcony’s railing – to soothe his frayed nerves and rolling stomach. Josephine is quiet and heavy in his arms. Her eyes had started drooping well into the evening, but all the noise of the ballroom had kept her from dropping off. They both have become too used to the quiet lull of the Fraldarius countryside. The journey home can’t come soon enough.

“You’ve had a busy day,” Felix says quietly, rubbing a hand up and down Josephine’s back. She snuffles against his neck but otherwise doesn’t react, and Felix thinks he can feel the brush of her eyelashes against his skin as her eyes finally drift shut. “Putting up with all those morons isn’t easy, huh?”

He’ll have to take her to the stables again tomorrow. It wouldn’t be fair to bring her all this way only to drag her around, ruin her sleep schedule, and barely let her have any fun. It’s not like Josephine will remember any of this when she’s older anyway, but Felix knows his own sour perception of the capital began at an extremely early age. He was dragged around and put in uncomfortable situations for next to no reward – if one doesn’t count getting to see Dimitri and sometimes Sylvain, which Felix doesn’t – and he’d rather avoid doing that to Josephine.

Despite her roots in the Empire, she’s part of Faerghus’ nobility, now, for better or worse. There are certain things Felix won’t be able to shield her from, but maybe he’ll be able to lessen the sting.

“Felix.” To his credit, Felix doesn’t jump at the sound of his name. He’d heard heels on the stone too late to react, so when he turns away from the balcony, Byleth has already reached him. She smiles when their eyes meet, though Felix only dips his head in a nod. “I figured you would have slipped away by now.”

“I thought about it.”

Byleth folds her hands over her stomach as she steps up to his side, staring out over the city of Fhirdiad that still glows bright with festival lights. Commoners aren’t allowed to take part in royal weddings, of course, but that doesn’t stop them from celebrating in their own way. Felix almost wishes he were down there instead. At least the alcohol would be better.

“Thank you for coming. We weren’t certain you would.”

“It would look bad if I didn’t,” Felix replies, though it’s not as if he truly cares.

“Of course,” Byleth says with some humor. Her eyes shine as she looks at him, hair and skin pale in the moonlight. Even this close up, she still evokes the image of Rhea, dressed in white and ethereal in that inhuman way of hers. “Whatever your reasons, everyone was glad to see you. You’ve become something of a myth these days.”

Felix rolls his eyes as Byleth laughs at him. He begins rubbing Josephine’s back again as she sighs in his arms. “You’re all being dramatic. Sylvain and Ingrid especially. We’ve gone much longer without speaking before.”

“You know how they worry,” Byleth says, eyes trained on Josephine. “Is she asleep?”

“Mostly. She’s usually dead to the world at this hour, but all the noise was bothering her.”

“Poor thing. I’ll admit, I don’t know much about babies. I thought they could sleep through anything.”

“Not this one,” Felix says, though his mind wanders to that day in Enbarr, when Josephine slept through every cheer, every wail of grief, each thunder-like rumble as another building crumbled to the ground. “I’ll probably head back to my rooms soon. The both of us have had enough excitement for one day.”

Byleth shakes her head, glancing back into the ballroom where her husband is likely still making the rounds. “No one will try to stop you. I did want to speak with you, however, before you go. About the Dukedom.”

Felix can’t quite temper the irritation that rises within him, judging from the apologetic look Byleth shoots his way. “You can’t wait a day before taking on a Queen’s duties?”

“Dimitri wanted to speak with you himself,” Byleth says pointedly, “but I thought you’d take it better from me.”

“Why do we have to talk about it?” Felix demands. “I thought it was obvious that there was no one else to assume my father’s position.”

Byleth tilts her head in consideration. “There are always other options. You’re next in line if we’re keeping with tradition, but no one is going to force you to become Duke, least of all Dimitri. You haven’t exactly told us what your thoughts are, so of course we’d have to ask.”

Felix stares down at her, momentarily stunned into silence. He’s had to change his feelings about the Dukedom several times over the course of his life. He was apathetic toward it as a child; as his father’s second son, the responsibility and riches of the title were never meant for him. After Glenn’s death, his family’s station became something Felix actively despised, and he would’ve rather slit his own throat than succeed Rodrigue as a meat shield for a prince masquerading as a person.

But now his father is gone. Felix is all that remains of the Fraldarius bloodline, and over the moons, he’s become almost resigned to the fact that he’ll be Duke before too long. It has never once crossed his mind that he could just… _deny_ the position.

“What would happen if I refused?” Felix finds himself asking.

“We haven’t really discussed it,” Byleth admits. “There are options, although the easiest path would be to have your territory assimilated into another. Most likely Gautier, since you share the Northern border.”

Felix scowls despite himself. “The Margrave would love that.”

“You could also appoint someone as your heir before abdicating,” Byleth continues, though the corner of her mouth twitches like she’s trying not to smile. “Ferdinand would be a good choice, since he already knows what he’s doing. Mostly.”

“He wouldn’t survive a winter up there,” says Felix. “And I already have an heir.”

Byleth nods. “That’s why giving control to Margrave Gautier would be the best option.”

Felix absolutely hates the sound of that. He wouldn’t mind if Sylvain were the one in charge, but the Margrave is too spiteful to retire anytime soon, and there’s no guarantee that Sylvain will even agree to become Margrave after his father. He could end up fucking off to any number of places to avoid the responsibility, and Felix isn’t cruel enough to deny him that right.

What would Felix do if he declined the position of Duke? Where would he go? What would become of Lydia, Sera, and all the other servants at the estate? As much as Felix has been burdened by his name, the life of a noble is all he really knows, and the idea of leaving it all behind doesn’t appeal to him as it once did.

“You deserve to have the choice, Felix,” Byleth says gently. She reaches out to place a hand on his shoulder, the contact brief yet grounding in that way of hers that Felix has always struggled to understand. “We asked so much of you during the war, and you’re well within your right to want to rest. No one would blame you if you left to live quietly somewhere.”

Felix is silent as her hand falls away. To live quietly, peacefully, is one of the things Felix has never allowed himself to want. He was a Fraldarius, practically born with a sword in hand and a purpose to serve the royal family. Maybe no one would blame him for leaving all that behind, but Felix would never be able to justify it within himself, not when he’s the only one left.

Josephine shifts in her sleep, face warm in the slope of Felix’s neck; in the end, it’s the thought of her, growing up freely under the protection that his name offers, that makes Felix look his Queen in the eye and formally accept his position as Duke.

~

The next morning, Josephine abruptly wakes Felix with a stray fist to the face, and as he dresses the both of them, Felix thinks about what Lydia always says about not letting Josephine become too accustomed to sleeping with him. But what else is Felix supposed to do when the cradle they brought him looks like it was crafted before Loog’s revolution?

After Josephine is dressed and fed, Felix takes her down to the royal stables. The only people they encounter are guards and the stray servant, what with the rest of the King and Queen’s guests probably still sleeping off the night’s bad decisions.

Josephine looks around as they walk, quiet as she takes everything in, and Felix finds himself huffing in amusement. “You don’t even know what you’re in for,” he says to her, and she tilts her head up at the sound of his voice. “If we were at home, you’d be screeching my other ear off.”

When they reach the stables, Felix waits for Josephine to realize what’s happening. It takes a minute, but then a horse whinnies in its stall and finally draws Josephine’s complete and utter attention. She screeches nonsensically, kicking her legs against Felix’s ribs, and Felix laughs.

A head pops out from one of the open stall doors, and Felix’s heart leaps in his throat when he realizes it’s Sylvain. His hair is windswept like it is after a ride, cheeks reddened from the wind. “Oh, thank the Goddess it’s you,” Sylvain says, and even as he disappears back into the stall, his voice carries to where Felix is rooted to his spot. “The _lungs_ on that one, Fe, she nearly gave me a heart attack.”

“Sorry,” Felix says lamely, coming to stand at the entrance to the stall. Sylvain flashes him a grin as he goes back to undoing the saddle around the horse beside him, a large, black stallion that Felix doesn’t recognize. “Where’s Rosemund?”

“Oh, she’s at home,” Sylvain explains as he hauls the saddle off the stallion’s back. The horse snorts, giving itself a rough shake that dislodges the black and red patterned blanket from his back. Felix watches it fall to the ground, shifting Josephine from one hip to the other as she squirms against him. “I decided to retire her after I came back from Enbarr. Thought she deserved to live out her golden years in peace.”

Felix makes a vague noise of acknowledgment. “And this is?”

“Felix, Jeremiah,” Sylvain says as he bends over to pick up the blanket. He folds it over his right arm and pats the stallion’s neck with the other. “Jeremiah, this is Felix. _Please_ don’t bite him, I don’t think I could stop him from cutting you up.”

Felix narrows his eyes, taking a step back. “He bites?”

“Only when he’s in a bad mood, which is most of the time.” Sylvain slings the blanket over the saddle, perched on its stand, before looking to Josephine, whose impatient squirming has kicked up a notch. “Josie looks, uh… is she in a bad mood, too?”

“She wants to pet him,” Felix replies before he can really register what Sylvain just said. “Wait, what did you just call her?”

Sylvain tips his head to the side. “Josie? Don’t tell me you don’t like it, Annette and Mercedes did!”

“Her name is _Josephine_.”

“That’s such a mouthful, though,” Sylvain complains, and Felix rolls his eyes before turning away. “All her little friends won’t be able to say it, so she needs a cute nickname.”

“She’s six months old, Sylvain, she doesn’t even have friends,” Felix says, though he’s frowning to himself. That’s something he’s never thought of before. The only reason Felix had a social life growing up was because most of the children from the other noble houses were around his age. Obviously, none of Felix’s friends have kids of their own yet, so where exactly is Josephine going to find a playmate, if she even wants one?

“Ferdinand brought Penny if you want to introduce her to Josie instead,” says Sylvain, drawing Felix from his thoughts. He closes the door to Jeremiah’s stall before falling into step beside Felix. He’s entirely too close, but Felix stands his ground, looking resolutely ahead. “She’s just a few stalls down.”

The last time Felix saw Penelope was in Enbarr, the night before the final battle. She’d stood unwaveringly while the two of them sat together by the fire, talking endlessly despite all the things they were each desperate to avoid. Byleth had already sent Ferdinand and the calvary ahead by the time Felix managed to drag himself out of his tent the next morning, and Felix hadn’t let himself think about Penelope or her rider until much, much later.

The young, palomino mare is much the same as she’s ever been: fit and brushed to perfection, even as she tosses her head when Felix and Sylvain appear at her stall. She snorts out through her nose only once, dark eyes alert yet calm. Penelope doesn’t startle when Josephine squeals, and Felix feels comfortable as he drifts closer, reminding his daughter to be careful under his breath.

“So, how did this happen?” Sylvain asks from behind him. “No offense, Fe, but you’re not exactly a horse guy. I’m surprised you’ve been letting her near stables at all.”

Felix shrugs, shifting Josephine’s weight in his arms as Penelope pushes her nose into the infant’s tiny hand. “You know that tree by the stable back home?”

“The apple one?”

“I like to sit with her there. Geralt and Sera would walk the horses by while they lead them to pasture, and Josephine just took a liking to them.”

Sylvain makes a vague sound behind him, and Felix moves to stand beside Penelope instead of in front of her. He angles his body around so that he’s somewhat facing Sylvain, who leans against the open stall door with his arms crossed over his chest. He smiles when their eyes meet, and Felix averts his eyes, catching another glimpse of the mark on Sylvain’s face. “What happened?” he asks quietly. “You didn’t have that the day before I left.”

“Ah, this?” Sylvain gestures at his face, rolling his eyes. “Got into a scuffle the morning after Edelgard died. There were some Imperial soldiers still hanging around, and they got the drop on me and Annette when we were searching for more survivors. What do you think? Does it add to my roguish charm?”

“Something like that,” Felix says, just to see what Sylvain will do.

“Mom had a fit when she saw it,” Sylvain comments off-handedly. “Said it made me look like Miklan.”

A deflection. It’s exactly what Felix had been expecting, so he doesn’t allow himself to feel much anger or disappointment, refocusing on Josephine and Penelope.

“Where’d you disappear to last night?” Sylvain goes on to say as Felix gently guides Josephine’s hand through Penelope’s mane. “I feel like I turned around and you were just gone.”

“Josephine was tired,” Felix replies. “We left around the time Leonie and Hilda started arm-wrestling.”

Sylvain bursts into laughter, deep and full bellied in a way Felix isn’t used to hearing. He never laughed like that at Garreg Mach, and it was a rare thing during the war, usually reserved for when they were drunk. “Too bad my parents couldn’t come. They would’ve died of disgust at the ‘sheer lack of decorum.’”

“Yeah,” Felix says, shooting Sylvain a pointed look, “that really is too bad.”

The man’s answering smirk is too familiar. “Someday,” Sylvain says. “I can still dream.”

Felix is probably the only person alive who knows Sylvain’s hopes and dreams involving his parents. It’s become entirely too dark and messy for Felix to bother with, especially now that he’s a parent himself.

“That’s probably enough for now,” Felix says, though he’s unsure who he’s even speaking to in that moment. He pats Penelope’s neck before stepping back, forcing himself to ignore Josephine’s whine of protest. “I need to start getting ready for the trip home.”

Sylvain quirks one, nicked eyebrow. “Already? You show up late and then take off early?”

Felix shrugs, stepping close enough that Sylvain is forced to back away, allowing Felix to exit the stall. “Josephine does better at home,” Felix says, which isn’t untrue, although he’s not doing this entirely for her benefit. “The sooner we’re back, the better.”

Sylvain actually has the audacity to pout at him as if they’re still teenagers. “I feel like we’ve barely gotten to talk. If I let you go now, will you at least promise to respond to my letters?”

Irritation floods Felix before he can stop it. “I’ve been _busy._ Raising a child isn’t exactly easy, you know.”

“I wouldn’t know, actually,” Sylvain replies, and there’s a look in his eyes that takes Felix back to their many arguments during the war, “because you won’t talk to me.”

“It’s not like I’m – ”

“I know you’re still upset.” Sylvain’s voice is quiet as he interrupts, and Felix shuts right the hell up, fingers twitching in the fabric of Josephine’s gown. “You said you weren’t, but I know you, Fe. And I can’t fix it if you won’t talk to me.”

Felix thinks they’ve talked enough, and he wants to tell Sylvain as much, but the words just won’t come. In the four months they’ve been apart, he’s spent so much time wondering what he could’ve done or said to change Sylvain’s mind about things. Felix has wondered if he should’ve pushed more, pushed less, turned Sylvain away when he came to him in the night or refused to let him leave in the morning.

Maybe if he hadn’t always pretended to be asleep. Maybe they could’ve talked back then, before Felix became too exhausted to even entertain the idea. Goddess, how did Sylvain manage with all those girls during their years at Garreg Mach? The two of them had never even _slept_ together, not really, but it had mattered to Felix.

It still matters, though Felix thinks he’ll end up taking that to his grave.

“There’s nothing to fix,” Felix says, but his voice sounds tired, even to his own ear. “We’re fine. I just don’t have the time to respond to everyone’s letters. It’s not just you, Sylvain.”

There’s no way Sylvain believes that, but whatever he sees in Felix’s expression stays his tongue, at least this once. It’s a small relief, but it doesn’t last.

“I meant what I said that night, Felix,” Sylvain says, and Felix wishes he could pretend he hadn’t heard, wishes his partial deafness were enough to shield him from the words Sylvain should have just fucking swallowed. “I just – Whatever else, I need you to know that.”

There were so many nights. Sylvain said so many things – as many things as he _didn’t_ say – but Felix knows exactly what Sylvain is talking about.

_I couldn’t take it, Fe. I couldn’t fucking take it if it’d been you down there._

“I do know,” says Felix, but he doesn’t look back when he leaves.

~

Felix goes home and doesn't let himself think about anything that happened in Fhirdiad. Lydia and the others welcome him and Josephine back, and Felix retreats to the study to catch up on everything he's missed. He rarely sleeps, only managing to doze off when Elizabet brings Josephine to him in the night. It's the only time he slows down, but even then, Felix is too exhausted to do anything other than nod off with his daughter in his arms.

When he isn't sorting through paperwork, Felix rides to town, speaking with business owners, the families of fallen soldiers, and whoever else steps into his path. It's the first time he's really been to the Fraldarius township since he's been home, so Felix accepts their praise of his war efforts and condolences over Rodrigue with little fanfare. He just nods and shakes hands and asks how he can help.

Since it's winter, Felix doesn't bring Josephine along, although her name comes up in conversation often. Apparently the doctor who'd seen to Josephine immediately upon their return from Enbarr has spread that she's "adorable and lovely, a model patient," and they wonder why the new Fraldarius heir hasn't been brought to town. The questions don't bother Felix as much as he thinks they should, and more often than not, he finds himself promising to bring her in the spring. He's known some of these people all his life, and he doesn't doubt that Josephine will be loved. She has that effect on people. 

But for the rest of that year, she isn't the Fraldarius heir. She's just Josephine, and she's Felix's. He feels it every time he steps into a room and is received with a screech and a gummy smile. Or when she hits her head on the leg of a table when she's learning to crawl and only stops crying when Felix rushes to her side. Or when he wakes up in the morning and finds that she's already awake and staring at him, quiet and content in his presence in a way no one has ever been before.

Felix spends the winter after the war falling in love with being a father. And when spring comes, every horrible thing that came before Josephine just feels like an afterthought, like a chapter in a book Felix has long since stopped reading.


	5. Chapter 5

Felix thinks nothing of it when the dreams start coming back. He dealt with them periodically during the war, especially after Gronder, and he’s become accustomed to jolting awake at night in cold sweats.

Before, he would dream of Bernadetta, and her high-pitched, terrified shrieks would ring in Felix’s ears long after he awoke. He carried her voice with him going forward, not a day going by where he didn’t think of her pleading _stay back, stay back, Felix, I mean it!_

He would dream about Linhardt, how thin and exhausted he’d been at Fort Merceus, dead-eyed and pale as Felix advanced with sword in hand and lightning in his veins. _Be quick about it,_ he’d said in a deadpan, and Felix thought about it for days, _weeks_ , afterward. He would advance far beyond his battalion with the words nipping at his heels like rabid dogs. _Be quick. Be quick, Felix._

These dreams are nothing like the ones that came before. Felix has nightly visions of Enbarr going up in flame. They don’t fight Edelgard, the Professor instead choosing to burn the Emperor along with her subjects. It’s something Byleth herself would never do, but the Professor in Felix’s dreams is stoic and unreachable. The war has gone on too long, and she’ll do whatever is necessary in order to end it.

But Felix fights. He fights because he knows what lies ahead, beyond the towering stone walls and the calvary. Someone different holds him back every night, but it’s almost always Sylvain, arms solid around Felix’s waist no matter how much he struggles. _We have to,_ Sylvain tells him, and he doesn’t let go, not even when Felix breaks and begs him to. _It’s what they deserve._

Maybe. Maybe Edelgard deserves to burn for her decisions, and maybe every single person who chose to follow her should suffer the same fate. They started the war that separated them from Byleth and killed Felix’s father. They’re the reason Annette smiles less, the reason Dimitri smiles _more_ , and Felix wants someone to pay for that.

But not her. Not his daughter.

Enbarr and Josephine burn, and Felix screams himself awake, every time. 

~

Spring nights are long and chaotic, and Felix has no one to blame but himself.

“I told you,” Lydia had said nearly a week into Great Tree Moon, when everyone’s sleep schedules were first disrupted by Josephine’s inconsolable crying. “The longer you wait, the harder it is to break the habit. You’ll both just have to get used to it.”

Felix doesn’t _want_ to get used to it, is the thing. It would irritate him more if he weren’t sick to his stomach over the mess he’s caused. After returning from Fhirdiad, Felix had grown complacent about allowing Josephine to sleep with him at night. It didn’t help matters when she stopped needing to eat as often throughout the night and Elizabet wasn’t wandering in and out to feed her every few hours.

But Felix had ignored all of Lydia’s pointed reminders, and now look where they are. Tired and miserable in their own home.

“It’ll be okay, Felix,” Elizabet says quietly. She’s leaning against the wall across from him, hands clasped together over her stomach. The smile she shoots him when their eyes meet is sympathetic, and Felix sighs, crossing his arms over his chest. “I think she’s getting better. She’s calming down a lot quicker than before.”

It’s hard to believe her words when he can hear Josephine’s wails through the walls. Felix and Elizabet have taken to standing outside the study, close enough to monitor Josephine but far enough away that she won’t hear the sounds of their voices and become even more upset. “You really don’t have to stay up with me like this,” Felix replies. “I’ve told you this before.”

Elizabet nods. “Of course, but then who would stop you from rushing to her?”

Felix scowls. “I have self-control.”

“Barely.” Felix remembers the days when Elizabet bowed to him every time he entered a room and refused to meet his eye. He much prefers this side of her, cheeky and outspoken, even when her quips are at his expense. “She makes one peep, and you’re across the house in seconds.”

Felix ignores the comment as he asks, “Are you all sure I’m just supposed to let her cry?” He understands that they all know more about childcare than he does, but he still can’t help but ask. His stomach has been in knots every night since this whole mess began, and he’s come to absolutely dread Josephine’s bedtime. “This won’t… traumatize her?”

“It’ll traumatize you more than Josephine, I promise,” Elizabet says, winking when Felix shoots her a scathing look. “She won’t remember a thing when she’s older. And just think, you’ll be able to sleep in your own bed without worrying about rolling over and smothering her in your sleep.”

Felix regrets divulging that particular worry of his to Elizabet. He doesn’t know what he’d been thinking. “I just don’t like listening to her cry,” Felix mumbles. The sound reminds him of the day he found Josephine, of her birthmother’s corpse wrapped around her, protective even in death. Elizabet hadn’t been entirely joking when she said the sound of Josephine’s distress could send Felix from one end of the estate to the other in a matter of seconds. He barely thinks in those moments, only knows that he’d do anything to make the sound _stop._ “I don’t like when she’s upset.”

“None of us do. It’s just how kids are. You’ll have to get used to it.”

Felix thinks he is, for the most part. He’s gotten better about ignoring Josephine’s whining when he won’t let her crawl around the kitchen floor, or when he carries her away from the stable before she’s ready. She’s easy to distract in those moments, and her agitation only lasts for as long as it takes Felix to find something new to draw her attention. This sleeping situation is something else entirely, where the only thing Josephine wants is something Felix can’t give her, and it feels like a personal failing on his part.

Felix sighs to himself, tipping his head back against the wall. His head pulses in steady beats, like a horse’s gallop, and he reaches up to tug his hair free of its band, allowing it to fall loosely around his shoulders. “It’s getting long,” Elizabet comments. “Would you like me to cut it for you?”

“It’s fine like this,” Felix replies. He always kept his hair on the longer side as a child to imitate Glenn, and it just became habit after his death. It was much harder to maintain during the war, though now that Felix has the time, he’s found that he doesn’t care enough to fuss over it as he once did. It’s just another entry in the long list of things he doesn’t have the energy for. “Besides, it’s not like… ”

He trails off, turning his head to glance down the hall toward the nursery. Josephine’s crying has tapered off into faint whimpers that Felix can barely hear. For a moment, he thinks she might have cried herself to sleep already – much sooner than she has every other night – but then Felix hears another noise, faint but still intelligible to his ear.

“ _Da!_ ”

Felix straightens against the wall, eyes wide, and Elizabet blinks over at him. She opens her mouth to utter a brief, “Felix,” but he’s already gone.

He doesn’t slam the door of the nursery open – that would only scare Josephine – but it’s a close thing. With a snap of his fingers, Felix ignites the candle just to the right of the door; much like every other time Felix has done this, the action illuminates Josephine’s form as she stands up in her crib, small hands gripping the wooden bars. Her blue eyes are wide and wet, and Felix’s stomach falls as she whimpers at him. He steps further into the room, but he almost trips over himself when Josephine cries, again and again, “Dada, Dada!”

Felix knows then that he hadn’t misheard before, back in the hallway. Josephine isn’t just babbling at him as she usually does. She’d been alone and scared, and she’d called for him on _purpose._ Felix lifts Josephine out of the crib and into his arms, and when he realizes that he’s crying, his first instinct is to hate himself for it, attempt to rationalize that it’s because he hasn’t been sleeping well and he’s just overwhelmed.

No one has ever let Felix forget that he was an emotional child. He cried often before Glenn’s death changed Felix’s perspective of the world around him. In the years after, Felix can’t recall having ever cried over _anything_ : not when his father died, not when he killed Bernadetta and Linhardt, and not over any of the shit Sylvain’s tried to pull with him since Garreg Mach.

Tears only reminded Felix of the weak-minded person he used to be, and he’d resolved long ago to never let his emotions get the better of him again.

But it’s impossible. Felix is tired, weighed down by dreams and indecision. Josephine sniffles against his neck, mumbling, “Dada, Dada,” over and over and _over_ again, and Felix is only human.

Felix squeezes his eyes shut, rubbing Josephine’s back even as hot tears spill down his cheeks. “It’s okay, darling,” he whispers, voice breaking with exhaustion or frustration or something else Felix won’t name. “I’m here. You don’t have to cry anymore.”

Josephine shudders even as she starts to relax against Felix’s chest, tears and misery still racking her tiny body. Felix will let her sleep with him for as long as she wants if it means she won’t cry like this, and nothing Lydia or Elizabet say will change his mind on the matter.

Felix won’t lie: it settles a restless part of his being to know that Josephine understands who he is, knows that he’s the one who will take care of her, but he doesn’t want her to have to call for him like that ever again.

Felix knows the moment someone else steps into the nursery. He doubts his instincts and reflexes will ever truly dull, no matter how much time he spends away from the battlefield. “I know,” he says harshly, wiping at his face with the sleeve of his shirt. “I can’t keep caving like this.”

“You could, but you won’t, because it’s better for the both of you in the long run,” Elizabet says gently, cooing when Josephine looks up at the sound of her voice. She pulls the sleeve of her brown, woolen nightgown down over her hand to wipe at Josephine’s tears and smiles up at Felix when their eyes meet. “But it doesn’t have to happen overnight. We have time.”

Elizabet is right, even if this whole thing feels like a monumental failure. All they’ve really managed to do so far is upset Felix and Josephine and disrupt everyone’s sleep. In a lot of ways, Felix has found, fighting in the war was so much easier than this new path he’s decided to undertake.

“And don’t think I didn’t hear you, little miss,” Elizabet says, rubbing a thumb under Josephine’s eye. “You’ve been holding out on us, hm? Didn’t want to speak until you could hold it over your dad like this? Clever thing.”

Josephine sniffles and looks up at Felix, mumbling another quiet, “Dada,” and Felix decides they’ve all had enough for one night.

~

The seasonal flowers have been blooming for two weeks when Felix hears hooves beating against the path leading down to the estate.

Josephine perks up in his lap, head turning toward the study’s open window. “ _Nee._ ” 

Felix sets his quill down before grabbing Josephine by her underarms, pulling her against his chest as he stands from his desk. “That’s right,” Felix says quietly as he carries Josephine from the room. In his dealings with the townsfolk – mostly twittering mothers who won’t leave Felix to his peace – he’s heard that affirmation and repetition work wonders for children just learning to speak. He makes a point of responding to Josephine regardless of what leaves her mouth, though he’s more comfortable doing it when no one is around. “The ponies bring guests to us, and we have to go greet them.”

“Nee!” Josephine crows in Felix’s deaf ear, and he smiles, gently pressing his forehead to hers.

Mercedes is helping Annette down from the carriage when Felix steps outside, and the redhead squeals when she catches sight of them, the smile on her face absolutely radiant. “She’s so _big!”_ Annette cries, and Josephine’s hand slips against Felix’s collarbone as she fidgets in his arms. “Oh, Goddess, can I hold her, Felix? Please?”

“Be my guest,” Felix replies. “Good luck though, she hasn’t let me put her down all day.”

Their nights spent apart have only made Josephine that much clingier during the day. Lydia says that, too, will fade with time, though Felix isn’t necessarily complaining in the meantime. “Hi, little Josie.” Mercedes stays behind to thank the coachman as Annette advances on Felix and Josephine, the calmness in her tone juxtaposed to the exuberant look in her eyes. “Do you remember me? I’m Annette, one of your daddy’s best friends.”

Josephine isn’t even a year old yet, much too young to understand even half of what Annette says, though her blue eyes are wide and inquisitive as she listens to Annette’s voice. “Say hi,” Felix encourages her, partly because he wants to prove that she can.

“Hi,” Josephine says, a small and quiet thing that apparently affects Annette just as it does Felix.

“ _Ugh_ , she’s so cute,” Annette groans, and to Felix’s relief, Josephine only puts up a small fuss when he hands her over. It’s nothing a little cuddling can’t fix, and after a few moments, Josephine seems perfectly fine in the arms of a near stranger. It doesn’t really come as a surprise to Felix, as he’s spent years with Annette and knows the intrinsic effect she has on people. “And this hair! It’s so soft. I should’ve known she’d be a brunette.”

“Now you all can’t make fun of her for being bald,” Felix says blandly, ignoring Annette’s cry of, “That wasn’t even me,” to greet Mercedes as she finally wanders over. “Hey. How was the ride?”

Mercedes’ eyes crinkle at the corners when she smiles, reaching out to gently boop Josephine on the nose before turning back to Felix. “I wasn’t awake for most of it, honestly. I was so excited when we got your letter that I haven’t really been sleeping.”

At Felix’s exasperated look, Annette says, “Okay, she wasn’t _that_ bad. I had to drag her to bed a few times, but she really is excited, Felix. She’s been pouring over plans and budgets and all kinds of things.”

Mercedes’ sheepish smile makes Felix’s heart do a number of complicated things, most of which he chooses to ignore. “I appreciate it,” Felix says, reaching out to smooth his hand along Josephine’s head almost as a reflex. She leans into the touch, as if remembering that he isn’t the one holding her, and Annette only pouts a little when Josephine extends her arms, reaching out for Felix again. “It’s something I’ve been thinking about lately because of… well, you know.”

“And we’re happy to help,” Mercedes reminds Felix as he resettles Josephine in his arms. Mercedes always had a maternal sort of quality to her, and it used to annoy Felix when they were younger. Back then, it often felt like the older girl was looking down on him, like she saw him as some weak teenager that needed to be coddled. But as she looks at him now with such blatant fondness and pride, Felix only finds himself choking up. “It’s a wonderful thing you’re doing, Felix. I’ve already spoken to Dimitri, and he’s sworn to help however he can as well.”

Annette claps her hands together, grinning widely as she says, “I’m just excited we get to stay for a few weeks. You’re sure you want to put up with us for that long?”

“I’ve already had a room prepared for you,” Felix replies, though the abrupt shift in topic isn’t lost on him. They all developed certain habits over the five years Byleth was missing, and one of Annette’s was redirecting a conversation if Dimitri came up around Felix or Ingrid. Watching her do it now makes Felix ache in ways he can’t quite explain. “And it will be good for Josephine to be around some new faces.”

“I will spoil her rotten,” Annette says dutifully, and Felix doesn’t doubt her for a second.

For the rest of the evening, Felix leaves his friends to settle in, and they don’t reconvene until later that night after Felix has put Josephine to bed. He leads Mercedes and Annette to his study, helping them carry the heavy, leather-bound folders they had tucked away along with their bags. He’s known for a long time about Mercedes’ passion for children and charity, but as he sets her folders down atop his desk with a heavy _thud,_ he realizes that he’s underestimated her yet again.

“I’m sorry if this is more than what you wanted,” Mercedes says, entirely too apologetic considering the amount of work she’s saved Felix. “I got a little carried away.”

“Are you kidding? You think Felix could’ve done this on his own?” Annette scoffs, taking in the disarray that’s been plaguing the study for the past few moons, and Felix doesn’t even take offense. “You’re a literal saint, Mercie.”

Mercedes blushes prettily in the way she only does when Annette compliments her, and Felix glances away before they can see his smile, gesturing for them to sit down in the chairs he’d brought up from the cellar earlier. “I’ve been looking through my father’s old papers,” Felix says as he sits down behind his desk. “Census records from before the war. Old correspondence with Margrave Gautier and King Lambert. Most of the children orphaned or abandoned in Fraldarius and Gautier have been sent to orphanages in Blaiddyd and Gideon for as long as they all were in power.”

Mercedes nods. “I’ve been checking in with the local orphanages while we were still in Fhirdiad. Most of them have more children than they can handle. They’re practically overflowing, and it’s the same with the others I’ve been in contact with in Blaiddyd.”

“A lot of them are refugees,” Annette adds quietly, worrying her hands together in her lap. “Kids from the Alliance, even the Empire. The Sisters working there told us it’s hard to find families willing to take them in so soon after the war ended. Some people don’t even have homes left to bring a child into, you know?”

Felix leans back in his chair with a heavy sigh, gazing over the papers on his desk. “We’ve never had official orphanages here in the North,” he says, not bothering to keep the anger and frustration he feels out of his voice. He trusts them to understand that it has nothing to do with them. “I don’t know what my father was doing. His future King was orphaned at a young age, you’d think it was something he would’ve felt passionately about.”

“I’m sure he had his concerns,” Mercedes says gently, “but after Duscar and King Lambert’s death… there were probably other things on his mind.”

Felix bites back a scathing comment about how he _knows_ what was on his father’s mind, knows that Rodrigue thought of very little else but serving the Kingdom to his utmost ability. But the longer Felix sits in this study that used to belong to his father, and the longer he pours over old and forgotten documents, Felix is starting to realize that he never really knew his father at all.

He never spoke of the Dukedom to Felix, not even after Glenn’s death. Felix wonders if Rodrigue hadn’t dared assume that his youngest son would accept his title once he was old enough to do so. Rodrigue never imparted that knowledge to him, knowledge that Felix desperately wishes he had now that the people of Fraldarius are depending on _him._

And as far as Felix knows, his father didn’t have friends to call upon when he needed help or guidance. How could he possibly have shouldered all these burdens?

“It will take time,” Felix says eventually, looking to Mercedes and Annette in turn. “I don’t have the funds necessary to start up even one orphanage, let alone five. You said you spoke with Dimitri?”

“Yes, and he offered financial support,” Mercedes affirms. “It won’t be much, not right away, but we think it can be done within the next few years.”

“We can start small,” Annette adds. “Even just one extra orphanage will help a lot.”

Felix nods along with their words, rubbing a hand over his mouth as he thinks to himself. “I haven’t heard back from him, but… I did write to Sylvain about this. To see if Gautier is interested in working with me and opening a few of their own.”

Mercedes and Annette blink at him in surprise, though when they glance at one another, Felix sees the hesitation in their eyes. “You know Sylvain would help in a heartbeat,” Annette begins, “but it’s not really up to him, is it? You’d have to go through the Margrave, and he’s… ”

“An evil bastard?” Mercedes purses her lips at Felix’s tone but says nothing. “He’d sooner laugh in my face if I went to him directly. He and Sylvain don’t get along, but he does listen to what Sylvain has to say. Sometimes.”

It has very little to do with the Anschutz Gautier’s feelings for his son and everything to do with Sylvain’s Crest. No matter their estrangement, Sylvain is still the man’s heir, and the Margrave has spent a lot of time grooming Sylvain to eventually assume his title. Felix has noticed over the years that Anschutz will let Sylvain get away with any number of things so long as he stays close, and if anyone can convince such a greedy, cold-hearted man to assist Felix’s cause, it’ll be Sylvain.

“It really would help a lot if you could have five locations in each of your territories,” Mercedes says thoughtfully. “The cold here is unforgiving, and children on the streets will need somewhere to go in Gautier as well, not just Fraldarius.”

Felix huffs, leaning forward to rest his chin atop his hand. “Things would be so much easier if that man just croaked and left Sylvain with everything.”

“Felix,” Mercedes scolds lightly, though Felix feels a smile tugging at his lips. He’s been on the receiving end of Mercedes’ disappointment many times in the past, so he can tell when she’s truly reprimanding him and when she actually agrees but just won’t say so. “Perhaps he’ll be more generous in the aftermath of the war.”

“Maybe if he’d been on the front lines with us,” Annette says, and if her tone carries any trace of bitterness, neither Felix nor Mercedes says anything about it.

~

Having Mercedes and Annette in his home is a double-edged sword for Felix.

In some ways, it feels just like their school days. Annette wakes Felix at godawful hours of the morning with her singing, and Mercedes insists on helping with meal preparations, running to and from the pantry with her skirts fluttering all around her. They take turns on babysitting duty, one watching Josephine while the other sits with Felix in his study, going over future plans and idealized budgets that make Felix wish he’d paid more attention during Byleth’s lessons.

In other ways, Felix is reminded of the war. He isn’t the only one who wakes up screaming with nightmares, and too often, he goes to the kitchen for water only to find Mercedes awake and standing at the window, barefoot and bobbed hair a mess. Too often, Felix catches Annette rubbing the dark, jagged scar along her right leg where she’d been caught by the Death Knight’s scythe.

She’d almost lost that leg, and it had taken Felix, Sylvain, and Ashe’s combined efforts to bring that skeletal figure to its knees. Mercedes had screamed and sobbed so hysterically that Felix was certain Annette had bled to death before they managed to get her to the healing tents, but the redhead had been up and marching with them within a week as if nothing had happened.

Mercedes barely sleeps, and Annette’s leg will always be stiff when she walks, but it’s nice to have them close by again. Things have obviously changed: they’re older now, weathered and battle-scarred in ways they never could’ve imagined as teenagers, but there’s a comfort in their mutual suffering, as horrible as it sounds to Felix.

They’ve seen the same things, committed the same atrocities in the name of the Kingdom. And although Felix called them here for their help, he desperately hopes his home and the people within it can soothe these women who have become family to him.


	6. Chapter 6

Annette takes to joining Felix when he goes down to the township every other day. He doesn’t exactly mind the company – he usually just slips away by himself when Josephine is napping – though he does worry about the impact all the walking might have on Annette’s leg.

“It’s good for me,” she tells Felix the first time he asks about it. “But I’ll tell you if it’s too much, okay? If it starts to hurt while we’re out, then I’ll just hop on your back, and you can carry me home.”

“Not on your life,” Felix replies, and Annette laughs indulgently, knowing he doesn’t mean a word of it.

It’s… _odd,_ walking the Fraldarius streets with a woman who isn’t Elizabet or Lydia, both of whom the townspeople are familiar with and know are employed by the Fraldarius family. The sight of Felix among the common-folk isn’t exciting news anymore, but the second Annette shows up with her bright hair and even brighter smile, suddenly all eyes are on Felix yet again, and he’s incapable of being ignorant as to why.

“Are you sure?” Annette asks the baker’s wife for the fifth or sixth time; Felix isn’t exactly certain. “These rolls smell really fresh. I’d feel bad for just accepting them with no payment.”

The baker himself – a stout yet tall man with the scruffiest beard Felix has ever seen – seems as if he’d love to take Annette up on her offer of payment but ends up shying away under the glare of his wife. “Don’t you worry about that, young lady,” the woman says, and Felix and the baker exchange a long look of mutual suffering. “Consider it a thank you for taking care of Lord Felix.”

Annette perks up at that, sliding the handle of her wicker basket into the crook of her arm. “Oh, I don’t need to be thanked for that. I’ve been doing it for so long already.”

Felix thinks Annette is milking it just a little too much, and he tells her as much when he finally manages to pull her from the bakery. “Listen, you think too much,” Annette chirps as they walk the streets together, Felix keeping close to her right side should she stumble. “They’re already going to assume, so I may as well get free food out of it.”

Felix heaves a sigh. “Whatever.

“It’s kind of funny, don’t you think?” Annette continues conversationally. “I’m not exactly sure what they’re seeing. Do either of us look like we’d ever marry someone of the opposite sex?”

“Don’t ask me,” Felix replies. It hadn’t exactly been the shock of his life to find Annette and Mercedes entangled together in one of the empty medical tents during the war, but it was a very close thing. “I’m not the best judge when it comes to these things.”

“ _No_ , really?” Annette says mockingly, giggling behind her hand when Felix rolls his eyes. “Oh, don’t be like that. Here, have some of my courtship bread.”

Felix takes the offered roll and viciously sinks his teeth into it. As he chews, he listens to the sound of their boots against the stone, of the rickety wheel on a cart being pushed past them. His walks through the township used to be of more importance than they’ve become. When he first returned from the front, it seemed like everyone had problems that needed solving.

Now it’s more a matter of making sure the people here know that even if Felix resides in an estate a good twenty-minute walk away, he’s still here with them. He isn’t an unreachable, crest-bearing god, and Felix has never once wanted to be one.

Felix startles when he feels Annette’s hand on his arm, and he glances down at her. “What is it?”

“Didn’t you hear me?” she asks, tilting her head.

Felix huffs out a sigh. He hears perfectly fine in the countryside where things are quiet. It’s when he’s in the hustle and bustle of the town that he struggles to focus on any one thing. “Sorry, it’s just,” he gestures vaguely to the side of his head, “my ear.”

Felix doesn’t realize his mistake until Annette blinks up at him in confusion. “Your ear?” she repeats. “What’s wrong with it?”

“I’m partially deaf now,” Felix admits quietly. “A Ragnorak spell blew it out in the last battle, and my hearing never came back.”

There are very few things Felix fears in life, although the list has grown exponentially since the war. But one of Felix’s most persistent worries comes in the form of upsetting Annette, who is very open with her feelings in most circumstances.

When she’s disappointed or hurt, however, she gets quiet. It’s a silence Felix has always hated. “You never said,” Annette says eventually. “But it makes sense. I noticed how you kind of turn your head to the other side when someone’s speaking to you now.”

Felix nods, fumbling over what he could possibly say. “I can usually hear fine, it’s just… it’s easier to pay attention that way.”

Annette purses her lips, shifting her weight off her bad leg. “I’m sorry that happened to you. I just wish you wouldn’t have hidden it from us. I thought we were past that.”

Felix’s instinct is to deny that he’d intentionally hidden anything from them, but he ends up biting the words back. As much as he enjoys Annette’s company now, it wasn’t always so. She was much too loud and flighty for him when they were teenagers, and all Felix had really cared about was training. Annette with her snacks and singing and overall cheerful disposition had been more than Felix was prepared to handle, after growing up with Sylvain, Ingrid, and Dimitri for friends.

She’d tried an innumerable amount of times to reach out, to peek behind the wall Felix erected between himself and the others, but Felix hadn’t made it easy for her. In fact, the real beginning of their friendship hadn’t taken place until after Edelgard became Emperor. The Blue Lion students had stuck together as much as they were able back in those days, lost without their prince and their professor to guide them.

Annette and Ashe were probably the only reason so many of them didn’t fall into utter despair the longer the war dragged out. They’d always believed, more than anyone, that Dimitri and Byleth would return to them.

“I’m sorry,” Felix says, because he owes Annette that much. “I just didn’t want to worry anybody.”

“We wouldn’t worry so much if you talked to us more,” Annette says pointedly. “Honesty is the quickest way to get us off your back, you know.”

“Honesty,” Felix echoes, slightly despondent. It feels as if he forgot how to just say what he means a long, long time ago. “I’ll keep that in mind.”

~

The only thing Josephine loves more than horses are baths. Whenever Felix carries her to the washroom, she kicks her legs in excitement from the moment he starts undressing her to the second she’s in the water. Felix repurposed an old, tin basin that Lydia uses for apple picking in the summer since Josephine is too small for the normal bath. It’s usually propped up on small table so whoever’s bathing her doesn’t have to bend over, but it makes frequent rounds within the house since Josephine sometimes likes to sit in it even when it isn’t bath time.

Felix doesn’t understand it at all, but at least she’s having fun.

The early afternoon suns warms Felix’s back and shoulders as he rubs his fingers through the fine hair on Josephine’s head. It’s gotten long enough that he can spike the strands up with soap if he’s in the mood – which isn’t often – though his daughter does make for quite the interesting picture in those moments.

“Ah!” Felix is quick to grab Josephine’s soapy hand when he sees it going for her mouth. She weakly fights his hold, whining in displeasure at being restricted. Felix swears that Josephine waits until he’s otherwise distracted to try eating the suds in her bathwater. “You know you’re not supposed to eat the bubbles.”

Josephine starts babbling in that way of hers; Lydia says it’s because she’s trying to tell Felix off for something. And although Felix has no way of knowing what goes through Josephine’s head in those moments, they do usually coincide with Felix scolding her for something. “The mouth on you, little lady,” Felix grumbles as he lowers her hands to wash off any excess soap. “It’s going to get you in serious trouble when you’re older.”

“That’s the pot calling the kettle black.” Felix jumps slightly when he hears Annette’s voice from the doorway. He doesn’t bother closing the door when he bathes Josephine, so Annette is peaking around the corner when Felix glances up, eyeing the two of them with something like mischief in her eyes. “The _filth_ I’ve heard come out of your mouth, Duke Fraldarius.”

“Shut up,” Felix huffs, placing a hand over Josephine’s eyes as he rinses out her hair. “What do you want?”

All at once, Annette’s eyes go wide, and she leans a little further into the room, glancing around the room in something like mock suspicion. “Why didn’t you tell us Sylvain was coming?” she hisses, and Felix nearly chokes on his next inhale. “I know we don’t live here, but it’s rude to not give us a chance to prepare for guests, you know.”

“Sylvain is _here?_ ” Felix demands. “Right now?”

Annette fixes him with a look like she thinks Felix is a lunatic. “Well, _duh_ , right now. He just showed up on that mean looking horse of his. What, were you not expecting him today?”

Felix wasn’t expecting Sylvain at all, or ever. He hasn’t heard a word from him since the morning after Dimitri and Byleth’s wedding. Honestly, Felix had begun to wonder if their little encounter outside the royal stables finally dissuaded Sylvain from even trying to maintain a relationship with him at all. But to show up unannounced is a painfully _Sylvain_ thing to do, so although Felix is flustered, he’s not exactly surprised.

“I guess I’ll… go see him,” Felix says haltingly, glancing from his wet hands and forearms to Josephine, whose eyes are attentive as she watches him speak. “Can you – ”

“Say no more,” Annette declares, and her leg seems a little stiffer today as she fully enters the room and takes the towel slung over Felix’s shoulder. “I’ll get Josie looking nice and pretty for her daddy’s suitor.”

“I’m kicking you out if you ever say that again,” Felix grumbles as he moves aside to let Annette take his place beside the basin. “Maybe take a lesson from Mercedes in _minding your business_.”

“Your daddy’s so mean,” Annette says to Josephine. “Thank the Goddess you’re here to soften his miserly heart.”

Josephine blinks, eyes tracking Felix as he wipes his hands on his black pants and moves to leave the room. “Dada!”

Felix hesitates, torn between wanting to know what Sylvain wants as soon as possible and just telling the man to wait his fucking turn, that Felix is busy, but Annette glares at him as she waves him off. “Don’t make him wait anymore. Mercie’s keeping him entertained, but you know how he gets when he wants to see you.”

No, Felix doesn’t think he does, but he knows better than to ask before he slips out of the washroom. 

He finds Mercedes and Sylvain in the parlor, standing at the window that overlooks the field behind the estate. They aren’t exactly speaking when Felix walks in, but Mercedes has a certain look on her face that would give Felix pause if he weren’t already so confused.

“Sylvain,” Felix says, and they both turn to look at him. All at once, Mercedes’ expression smooths out, and Sylvain’s smile is so wide that Felix would never have guessed that their last interaction was so tense.

“Hey, Felix,” Sylvain greets him, hazel eyes scanning Felix from head to toe. “Did I catch you at a bad time? You’re all… wet.”

Felix glances down, only just noticing the wet splotches near the bottom of his white button-down. His pants are also damp in the places Felix had wiped his hands, though he isn’t sure why it matters. He looks back up at Sylvain, quirking an eyebrow in question. “You’ve seen me covered in worse,” he says. “What’s a little water?”

“You realize how suggestive that sounds, right?” Sylvain says. “You shouldn’t say things like that in front of a woman, Fe.”

“Oh, shut _up,_ ” Felix grouses, imagining both of his hands around Sylvain’s stupidly attractive neck. “I can’t fucking stand you.”

Sylvain gives a mock gasp, reaching out to cover Mercedes ears, although she’s quick to smack his hands away. “Aw, c’mon, Mercie, don’t be like that.”

“Stop antagonizing him, Sylvain,” Mercedes says patiently. “Unless you want this visit to end as soon as it started.”

“Felix wouldn’t kick me out, he loves me too much.”

Annette chooses that exact moment to walk in behind Felix, and he wonders if she’d been hovering in the hallway, waiting for the perfect moment to intervene. “Even Felix has his limits,” she says nonchalantly. “I’m surprised he hasn’t gotten fed up with you yet, honestly.”

Sylvain is practically beaming as he looks at Annette, and then Josephine, dry in her arms and dressed in a baby blue gown. “It’s nice to see you, too, Annette. And you, Miss Josie.”

Josephine doesn’t respond to his voice, not at all used to the nickname, and Felix smirks at Sylvain’s resulting pout. She instead angles herself toward Felix, straining in Annette’s hold. “Dada,” she whines, and Felix takes her into his arms, ignoring the weight of Sylvain’s stare. “Nee.”

“We’ll see the ponies later,” Felix says, and it isn’t _No,_ which is her least favorite word, but she seems to get it nonetheless as she kicks her legs in protest.

“What was that?” Sylvain asks. “Was she trying to say pony?”

“I thought it was easier than horse,” Felix says, as if he even needs to defend himself. “Clearly it worked.”

Sylvain still seems slightly mystified, even as he says, “Yeah. Clearly.”

“You should hold her, Sylvain,” Annette says suddenly. “You haven’t gotten a chance to yet, right?”

The way Sylvain goes still at the suggestion would be more comical if Felix weren’t going slightly lightheaded himself at the idea of Sylvain holding a baby. _His_ baby. “I don’t know how to hold a baby, Annette.”

“It’s not hard,” Felix hears himself say. “It’s easier now that she can hold her own head up.”

Sylvain snorts like this is the funniest thing he’s ever heard, but his eyes are wide and slightly panicked as Felix moves closer with Josephine. Felix doesn’t hold his breath as they make the careful transfer, but it’s a close thing. He half expects Sylvain to change his mind, or for Josephine to pitch a fit because she isn’t used to men other than Felix.

But almost in the blink of an eye, Sylvain has Josephine in his arms. The pair of them just stare at one another, and although Sylvain’s expression is inscrutable, Felix knows his daughter well enough to understand what’s probably going through her little head as she takes Sylvain in.

And sure enough, barely another moment goes by before Josephine is reaching up and yanking on a lock of Sylvain’s hair. “Oh, wow, okay,” Sylvain says with a wince, scowling over at Annette and Mercedes when they start giggling. “You weren’t joking when you said she liked redheads, Fe.”

“When have you known me to joke about anything?”

“Fair enough.” Sylvain’s nicked eyebrow twitches as Josephine gives another solid yank, but his mouth is doing that weird, wobbly thing it does when he’s trying not to smile. “This isn’t so bad. She’s all warm and stuff.”

“I’m obsessed,” Annette says seriously. “I never want to put her down, but most of the time she just wants Felix.”

Sylvain opens his mouth to say something, but then his eyes meet Felix’s, and whatever words he’d prepared seem to die in his throat. _Probably for the best,_ Felix thinks as Sylvain clears his throat before looking away. “I mean, he did save her,” Sylvain eventually says. “It makes sense that he’s her favorite person.”

“Daddy’s girl,” Mercedes pipes up, entirely unhelpfully, but Felix can’t even pretend to be annoyed.

~

They don’t really get a chance to talk until later that night. Felix puts Josephine to bed and then goes to his study, where he finds Sylvain slouched over in one of the additional chairs. His legs are crossed at the knee, and the hard line of his jaw, made stark in the candlelight, has Felix swallowing harshly.

“Does she cry like that every night?” Sylvain asks as Felix quietly shuts the door behind him. “How do you deal with it?”

“The best I can,” Felix replies. He doesn’t move to sit behind his desk, instead choosing the chair that sits opposite Sylvain’s. Annette and Mercedes typically use them when they work in here, even if Felix isn’t around, so the chairs are a little closer than Felix would like. If Sylvain decided to uncross his legs, some part of him would probably brush Felix’s knee. “She has a hard time sleeping without me. We’re working on it.”

“That’s… kind of cute,” Sylvain says at length, shooting Felix a small smile. “Josie’s really attached to you, huh?”

“ _Josephine_ is most comfortable with me, yes,” Felix says pointedly, watching keenly as Sylvain rolls his eyes good-naturedly. “I’ve been with her from dusk ‘til dawn since the war. Of course I’d be the person she knows best.”

Sylvain chuckles, drumming his fingers on the arms of his chair as he says, “Yeah, of course. How old is she, anyway? She’s gotten a lot bigger since you brought her to the wedding.”

“We think she’ll be around a year old in Verdant Rain Moon.” The local doctor comes every month to examine Josephine, and in that time, he’s taken a few stabs at determining her exact age. Developmentally, he says she’s as far along as the average ten-moon old, and his most recent guess was that she was born around the twelfth of Verdant Rain Moon.

“That’s two moons away,” Sylvain murmurs. “Any big plans?”

Felix shakes his head. He’s thought about it a lot, but having a child’s birthday in the heart of the rainy season is a little difficult. There’s no telling what the weather would be like, and the last thing Felix wants is to cancel something last minute, or for Josephine to be caught in the rain and end up sick.

“Well, I hate to break it to you,” Sylvain continues, so abruptly it almost startles Felix, “and I’m sure you’ll be just devastated to hear this, but I won’t be able to come if you do end up making a big deal out of it.”

Felix frowns, peering at Sylvain in the low lighting as he tries to make sense of what the other man is telling him. “Okay,” he says slowly, becoming increasingly agitated the longer he thinks about it. The worst part is that he doesn’t know _why_ exactly he feels that way. “Why?”

“That’s kind of why I came to see you,” Sylvain admits, and when he uncrosses his legs, the toe of his boot catches Felix’s shin. “Well, not to tell you I’m going to be some loser who can’t come to his best friend’s daughter’s birthday, but just that… I won’t be around for a while. I’m leaving for Sreng in a few days.”

At that, any ounce of irritation Felix may have felt abruptly vanishes. “Sreng,” he repeats. It’s been so long since he even thought about the small country beyond Fraldarius and Gautier’s northern border. The small-scale invasion King Lambert and Rodrigue led when Felix was just ten years old paled in comparison to their war against the Empire, and the lingering tensions between their nations had been buried underneath it all. “You’re going to Sreng. _Why_?”

“His Highness asked me to,” Sylvain replies, and even now, he still refuses to say _Dimitri._ “We’re trying to achieve peace for Fodlan, right? We can’t do that when things are still in limbo with Sreng.”

“Why send you? Why not… ”

Sylvain’s smile is just slightly bitter as he says, “C’mon, Fe, I’m no Margrave, but I’m slightly more diplomatic than my old man. You really think he could smooth things over with them?”

Not even remotely. The Margrave would sooner start another war than do anything of actual importance. Sylvain’s father has made his feelings about “others” perfectly clear over the years, if his persisting treatment of and disregard for Dedue is any indicator.

Sylvain doesn’t have the experience, but he doesn’t see people in the same way his father does. He doesn’t care about skin color or crests or differences in culture. And he’s _charming_ – Felix knows this more than anybody still alive – so Felix understands why Dimitri would feel comfortable sending Sylvain to do this.

But still. Felix can’t help but worry. “Shouldn’t I go along?” Felix asks, although he absolutely hates the idea of it. “We were the ones who ended up annexing the territory we took from them after the invasion.”

“I’m representing the both of us,” Sylvain assures him. “Ah, the both of our territories. You’re needed here, Fe. It made more sense for me to go.”

“But you don’t like the heat,” Felix says before he can help himself.

“What, like you do?” Sylvain counters, borderline teasing, and Felix looks away, cheeks burning. “I’ve just been wasting away at home with my parents all this time. At least this way I’ll finally be doing something useful.”

Felix immediately takes issue with the wording. It reminds him of a time in his life he never wants to revisit. “You’ve been useful,” Felix says. “So many of us would’ve died during the war if it weren’t for you. The two of us practically held the eastern border before Byleth came back.”

“The Northern Pillars,” Sylvain says, and the look they share is more loaded than anything Felix has felt in a long time.

In a way, he and Sylvain have never been as united as they were during those first five years of the war. They were the faces of the front against the part of the Alliance that sided with the Empire, and the sight of Sylvain atop Rosemund, clutching the Lance of Ruin, along with Felix and the Aegis Shield, was one Felix knows their people took comfort in.

The Northern Pillars, they called them. It was a stark contrast to how they were viewed by the citizens of the Empire when the Kingdom truly began its offensive, where only death followed the heirs of Houses Gautier and Fraldarius.

“I know what you’re saying, Felix,” Sylvain says quietly. “I just think it’s better for me to go off and be some ambassador instead of staying with my parents. I’ll go fucking crazy at this rate.”

It’s clear to Felix that Sylvain has already made his decision. Is this really why he’d come? To just say goodbye? “How long will you be gone?”

“However long it takes me to charm their pants off,” Sylvain replies with a wink. “You know how it is.”

“Gross,” Felix says in a deadpan. “How will this even work? They don’t have a centralized government for you to woo.”

Sylvain sighs at that, reaching up to run a hand through his hair. “Yeah, it’s a little more complicated than that. I won’t bore you with a history lesson, but their tribes _are_ connected by a higher official. They call him the Warlord, but there are several chiefs under him. It’ll take a while to work my way around, but I think it’s manageable. His Highness already set things up for them to host me and everything.”

Felix’s fingers twitch atop his thighs before they curl into his palms. His nails press and bite at his skin, but it’s only an afterthought. “Sylvain… ” Felix trails off, frustrated by how helpless he suddenly feels. No matter the state of their relationship, Felix has always taken a sort of comfort in knowing that Sylvain was nearby, if only somewhat. This is something different, something they haven’t had to deal with in all the years they’ve known one another.

Sylvain makes an odd sound as he looks at Felix, something between a sigh and a groan. “Don’t look at me like that, Fe.”

“Like _what?_ ”

Sylvain doesn’t elaborate, and Felix knows he could run himself ragged trying to decipher whatever the hell the other man had meant. He spent so long thinking his feelings for Sylvain were inscrutable, that no one would ever understand the depth of emotion Felix had been grappling with since they looked into one another’s eyes as children and swore to die together.

Felix doesn’t want to wonder if Sylvain had seen through him the entire time, that he’d understood what Felix’s lingering gaze meant for _years_ and still chose to turn away when everything came to a violent crescendo.

“I read your letter,” Sylvain says after a long moment of tense silence, and for once, Felix is thankful for the change of subject. “And I talked to my mother about your proposal.”

“Your mother?” Felix echoes. “Why not the Margrave?”

“You know she’s all for public philanthropy,” Sylvain explains, expression shadowing in that way it only does when he discusses his parents seriously. “If she thinks it will make her and my father look good, she’ll agree to anything. He’s already pissed enough that I decided to go to Sreng without consulting him, so I figured she would be the best one to convince him.”

Felix withholds a sigh as he crosses his arms over his chest. “All this manipulation for some _orphanages._ ”

“You gotta play the game, sweetheart,” Sylvain replies, though he seems just as exhausted as Felix. “And no one does it better than a Gautier.”

~

Sylvain leaves the next morning, but only after Lydia harangues him into staying for breakfast. “You look awful,” she tells him, firmly directing his path toward the dining room while Felix, Annette, and Mercedes look on. “I won’t be having you pass out on that horse of yours and busting your head open from hunger, Sylvain.”

“That was _one time,_ Lydia, and I was only twelve,” Sylvain complains, shooting Felix a look that clearly conveys _Help me,_ although Felix ignores him. “I have to make good time today if I want to be back home within the next few days.”

“It was one time too many, you insufferable man,” Lydia says with a solid shove to Sylvain’s shoulders. “Eat with Felix, Lady Dominic, and Lady Martritz before I lose my temper.”

“She’s scary,” Annette whispers in Felix’s ear, though he knows better than to comment.

Breakfast is mostly carried by Annette’s cheerful, early morning chatter. Mercedes says very little, though from the pallor of her skin, Felix knows it’s because she didn’t sleep well the night before. He suggests that she lay down after they finish eating, but she insists on going with them to see Sylvain off. She and Annette hold hands at Felix’s side as they watch Sylvain mount Jeremiah, and Felix holds Josephine a careful distance from the stallion, remembering what Sylvain had said about biting.

“Travel safely,” Mercedes says as Sylvain settles. “Don’t fall and hurt yourself.”

“Lydia really is so mean to me,” Sylvain huffs. “How could she embarrass me like that in front of my dearest friends?”

“We already know how much of an embarrassment you are,” Annette assures him, “and we love you anyway. So, don’t worry about it.”

Sylvain huffs out a laugh before sliding his gaze to Felix. They stare at one another for a moment as Felix tries to think of something to say, though nothing comes to him. His chest has been hurting since their conversation in his study, and he refuses to let Sylvain see it. “Say goodbye to Sylvain,” Felix tells Josephine. “You won’t get to see him for a while.”

Josephine waves her fist in the air, eyes bright as she cries, “Bye-bye!”

It’s barely noticeable, but Sylvain’s gloved hands tighten on the reigns, and Jeremiah snorts, stabbing at the ground with a hoof. “Bye-bye,” Sylvain replies in a voice so soft it makes the ache in Felix’s chest even worse. “Take care of your daddy for me.”

 _You son of a bitch,_ Felix thinks, but what comes out of his mouth is, “You better write.”

If Sylvain is surprised by this order, he doesn’t show it. Sending correspondence over the mountains is no simple task, and Felix feels ridiculous for even saying it. But Sylvain only smiles and says, “Of course, Fe. So long as you promise to respond.”


	7. Chapter 7

Felix wakes up as Bernadetta is asking him _Why?_ He isn’t conscious of having made a sound, but his throat is raw like he’d been screaming, or as if something had tried to claw its way out.

He lies there on his back, trying to calm his racing heart into something less painful, and he’s only slightly succeeded when he hears a knock on his door. Quickly, Felix sits up, blinking past the dots in his vision. “Come in,” he calls, and it hurts.

When the door opens, Felix can only make out the silhouette of the person in the frame. He hears a whispered breath, a familiar, relief-evoking spell, and all the candles in Felix’s room sear into illumination, revealing Mercedes as she steps further inside. “Sorry,” she says quietly, closing the door behind her. “I heard you shout. Are you okay?”

She knows he isn’t. She would’ve stayed at the door otherwise. Mercedes’ white nightgown flutters as she walks around Felix’s bed, and she doesn’t wait for an answer before lifting the covers and crawling into bed beside him. Felix isn’t used to the sensation of the bed dipping under someone else’s weight, and he falls back down against his pillows as Mercedes makes herself comfortable.

“I was just dreaming,” Felix murmurs, remembering what Annette had told him about honesty. “About Gronder. Bernadetta.”

Mercedes sighs, the sound shaky and quiet but so, so heavy. “I understand,” she says. “I have those, too, about Lorenz.”

Felix remembers that day almost as well as Mercedes. Dedue had just returned to them, and some small, wounded part of Felix had hoped that his presence would shake something loose in Dimitri, the final, broken piece that hadn’t quite disappeared when Byleth returned. But there was nothing. Nothing but a mad king and his army, and they’d flooded that fortress not knowing if they’d live to see the Kingdom’s flag fly.

Lorenz had filled some place in Edelgard’s army that Ferdinand had abandoned, a place the man apparently couldn’t have found with Claude. The fussy, damn near insufferable boy they’d known had appeared before them again as a visage of dark, powerful magic, and Felix still swears that his mount’s eyes had glowed a faint crimson. 

Mercedes had sunk a magic-laced arrow directly through Lorenz’s neck the second he turned his attention to Dedue and Ashe, but Felix has never heard her speak of the incident since.

“Is that why you can’t sleep?” Felix asks. “The dreams?”

“Mm, partially.” Mercedes turns onto her side, and her movements are careful as she shifts closer, reaches out to run her fingers through Felix’s hair. Felix lets his eyes drift shut, chooses to focus on the brush of the pads of Mercedes’ fingers against his scalp. He knows her tics and quirks as he knows Annette’s, and he can’t imagine not allowing her this, even though he wouldn’t grant the same privilege to anyone else. “Even when I don’t dream, my mind just can’t seem to stop racing. It’s… very annoying.”

“Have you tried spells? Sleeping droughts?”

Mercedes’ hair brushes against a pillow as she shakes her head. “Neither of those will fix the real problem,” she says softly. “It would still be there in the morning, and I’ve seen too many soldiers become dependent on those things. I’d like to work through this on my own, if I can.”

Felix’s chest aches for her, even as he recognizes the logic in her reasoning. “How do we fix it?” he asks, and if he sounds a little desperate, Mercedes says nothing of it. “How long will it take?”

“I don’t know, Felix,” Mercedes replies, and when he opens his eyes, turns to look at her, all he sees in her eyes are shadows. “I wish I could tell you.”

They fall asleep curled into one another, Mercedes’ hand still tangled in Felix’s hair. When Felix wakes next, light is just beginning to peak in through the curtains. The first thing he notices is that Annette joined them at some point during the night, curling into the curve of Mercedes’ back with an arm slung over the dip in the other woman’s waist.

The second thing Felix notices is that Mercedes’ breathing is even and deep.

~

They return to Fhirdiad eventually, but not before making Felix swear to write. Annette asks if he’ll bring Josephine to the capital around her birthday so they can celebrate, and Felix is careful not to make any promises, even as he’s planning out the trip in his head.

Watching the carriage whisk Mercedes and Annette away stimulates a deeply uncomfortable feeling in Felix that he chases away with Josephine. He puts the work they’d done planning the orphanages on hold for a while to spend time with her, talking with her and bringing her down to the township as he’d promised to do in the winter.

Despite only having recently come around on children, Felix wholeheartedly understands the joy people exhibit when they spot Josephine in his arms, all dolled up in her gowns and bows. It’s odd to watch the effect his daughter has on him extend to virtual strangers, as they coo and fuss over her in a way Felix would’ve taken issue with before, if it weren’t for the way Josephine greedily absorbs the attention.

Some part of Felix wonders if Josephine misses Annette and her constant love and affection. Before, Josephine was weary of strangers, but after Annette’s and Mercedes’ departure, she opens up in a way Felix hadn’t thought possible, charming her way through the township with giggles and babbling that were previously reserved only for the estate and those who lived there. She doesn’t go so far as to let anyone take her from Felix’s arms, but that suits him just fine.

The baker’s wife, whose name Felix has learned is Emma, is manning the store when Felix walks by, and she practically flags him down to force more free pastries on him. For Josephine, she offers a small cookie that can be held in her tiny fist. She barely has any teeth and can’t quite eat it on her own, but her eyes go so comically wide as she sucks at it that Felix can’t help but laugh. “She hasn’t had very many sweets yet,” Felix tells Emma.

“A shame,” Emma comments, but she’s smiling. “You make sure you spoil this one every once in a while, Lord Felix. A first child is very special.”

“Yes,” Felix says. “They really are.”

~

Ultimately, Felix decides to take Josephine to Fhirdiad for her first birthday.

He hesitates in the days leading up to their departure, slightly uncomfortable with the of leaving everyone in his household behind. They’re just as much Josephine’s family as he is, and he doesn’t want to come across a certain way by whisking his daughter off to the capital for such a special occasion.

Lydia will hear none of it, of course, dragging Felix’s travel bags out of storage even as he vocalizes his desire to perhaps cancel the whole trip and stay home. “We’ll have plenty of birthdays to celebrate with her,” she tells him. “Lady Dominic and Lady Martritz are very much looking forward to this. Don’t disappoint them, Felix.”

In the end, Felix opts to bring Elizabet with him. She’s made it no secret that she’ll take her leave once Josephine is weaned, and Felix wants her to experience at least one of Josephine’s birthdays. Elizabet has never been to the capital in all the years she’s lived in Faerghus, and although she expresses some apprehension, she ultimately agrees to accompany him.

“It’ll put your mind at ease if someone you trust is there to watch her, should you be called away on business,” Elizabet reasons.

Felix scowls at the thought. “Dimitri won’t make me work while we’re there if he values that second eye of his,” he says, and if Elizabet is startled by Felix threatening their King in such a way, she doesn’t show it.

They arrive in Fhirdiad the day before Josephine’s birthday. She does a much better job weathering the long trip than she had before, spending most of her days sleeping or demanding to be passed back and forth between Felix and Elizabet in the carriage. Josephine has just woken up from a nap when they pull up outside the castle, and she’s quiet in Elizabet’s arms as Felix greets one of Dimitri’s many attendants.

“His Majesty regrets that he could not greet you himself, Lord Fraldarius,” the man says in a bow. “He and the Queen are presently held up by matters of the court.”

Felix waves him off. “Does he need me to be there?”

“Not just yet, but Lady Galatea asked to have you meet with her and Sir Duran upon your arrival.”

“Where will I find them?”

“In the council chamber, my Lord.”

Felix nods, turning to Elizabet. “Have them escorted to my rooms, please. Elizabet, I’ll leave Josephine with you. Call for an attendant if you need anything.”

Elizabet dips her head. “Yes, Lord Felix.”

“Dada,” Josephine says around her fingers, and Felix forces himself to ignore her whining as he heads deeper into the castle.

Upon entering the council chamber, Felix is equal parts annoyed and relieved. Ingrid and Ashe are where they said they’d be, and Dedue is even with them. But so is Anschutz Gautier.

“Felix,” Ingrid says when she sees him, standing from her chair. The look she gives him just _begs_ for him to remain calm and cordial. “We were waiting for you.”

“Ah, Duke Fraldarius.” The Margrave has always been a sinister visage for Felix. He looks entirely too much like Sylvain, though he’s never once regarded Felix with the same care and warmth that Sylvain does. “I’d heard you would be coming to the capital soon. I’m pleased our visits seem to have coincided.”

“Of course,” Felix grits out. It isn’t lost to him that Dedue had been the only one standing when he walked in, hovering just beyond Ashe’s shoulder. “It’s been a long time.”

“I was just chatting with your friends, here,” Anschutz goes on to say, gesturing to Ingrid and Ashe. “I’ve been asking after my wayward son, you see. His mother and I have barely heard from him since he ran off to that desert.” 

“He’s written to me once,” says Felix as he wanders over to the others. Ingrid slowly sits back down, though her eyes never stray far from him. “He’s been busy though. I’m sure that’s why you and Lady Gautier haven’t heard from him.”

“I imagine so. I also received your proposal about the orphanage project. I can’t say I wasn’t surprised by your interest. I wondered if it had anything to do with your recent adoption.”

Felix recognizes a trap when he sees one. Anschutz is skilled at feigning interest while voicing countless criticisms, and Felix has no interest in hearing the man’s opinion about Josephine. Still, Felix replies, “Yes. My daughter has… opened my eyes to a lot of things.”

“Perhaps,” the Margrave says flippantly. He stands from the table, turning to make his way toward the door. “Although at your age, I would instead be worrying about your bachelor status. Finding a wife cannot be easy now that you’ve decided to saddle yourself with a crestless, Adrestian war orphan.”

It’s not the worst thing the man could’ve said, but Felix swears he sees red in a way he hasn’t since the war. Forget playing nice. Felix isn’t Rodrigue, passive to a fault, and he won’t let Anschutz treat him like he is. “How dare you.”

“Felix,” says Ingrid urgently, but Felix’s attention has focused on a single point, his abrupt fury so strong that it seems as if even his deaf ear is ringing.

“How _dare_ you!” Felix snarls, lurching after Anschutz despite the hands tugging on each of his arms. “You would lecture _me_ about being a father when you left your sons to tear one another apart for _years._ I don’t want to hear _your_ opinions about my life or my daughter’s!”

The Margrave’s expression seems caught in a sneer, though he keeps walking, putting ever more distance between himself and Felix. “You’ve always been too mouthy for your own good. It’s a wonder you weren’t deemed too volatile to assume the title of Duke.”

“Felix is the only man suited for the position,” Ingrid says. Her fingers dig into Felix’s bicep tight enough to bruise, and her voice is harder than steel. “His Majesty would have no other as the Shield of Faerghus.”

“And after him?” Anschutz questions. “I suppose the girl with Empire blood in her veins will gladly serve a king who slaughtered her countrymen.”

Felix has thoughts, _visions,_ of taking Anschutz by the throat and pummeling him into the floor. It’s been a long time coming, and Felix will gladly take the opportunity to repay the man for all the years of trauma and abuse he inflicted on Sylvain and Miklan. His sons’ downward spirals link directly to him, and Felix recalls all the anger and frustration he’d felt as a child and teenager, so full of righteous fury toward this man but too weak to do anything about it.

He took up the Dukedom in part to discourage mindsets like the Margrave’s, to build a future where Josephine didn’t have to grow up constantly finding herself lacking over a matter of blood. Felix has the power, now. He has the status to put Anschutz in his place, both socially and politically.

But that means nothing in the face of the man’s words against Felix’s daughter. Anschutz doesn’t deserve to be dealt with through regular, socioeconomic means. Felix wants him in the _ground._

“I think that’s enough for today,” Dedue says from behind Felix. “Margrave Gautier, I suggest you make yourself scarce before His Majesty arrives.”

Anschutz tilts his chin up, meeting Felix’s furious glare with a cool look of his own. Felix knows better than to fall for it. For all he can’t seem to keep his mouth shut, the Margrave understands his position when faced with members of Dimitri’s inner circle. They aren’t children under the thumbs of their parents any longer. He can’t take liberties to discipline Felix or Ingrid as he had in the past.

“As you say,” Anschutz says evenly. “I do hope you consider my words, Duke Fraldarius.”

Felix has half a mind to spit on the man as he passes, though the pressure of Ingrid’s heel on his foot manages to keep him from losing what little composure he has left. He breathes heavily through his nose as the Margrave exits the room, and only when he hears the sound of the door slamming shut do Ingrid and Ashe release him.

“I’m going to kill him,” Felix spits.

“If we don’t get to him first,” Ashe grumbles. His face is tinted crimson with the exact same anger that broils in Felix’s gut. “He had no reason to speak to you like that. And to say all those things about Josie!”

“He’s always been a horrible man,” says Ingrid. She watches Felix carefully, as if prepared to stand in his way should he ultimately decide to race after the Margrave. “He speaks to us like we’re still children. As if we didn’t see more time on the front lines than he ever has.”

The comment sends Felix into another spiral of white-hot anger. He thinks of all the times Sylvain rode onto the battlefield atop Rosemund, clutching the Lance of Ruin that helped drive Miklan to madness. How many times had he fallen in the mud, struck by arrows, only to get back to his feet and soldier on with that _infuriating_ look on his face, the one that spoke of death and loss and an utter lack of care?

All while the father who both carried out and enabled the abuse of his sons sat quietly at home, obsessing over the future of his precious bloodline.

Felix clenches his jaw. “I’m bringing this to Dimitri, and you’d better not stop me.”

“Why would we do that?” Ashe demands, and Ingrid says, “Stop you? We’ll join you.”

“His Majesty knows that Margrave Gautier is a remnant of a bygone era,” says Dedue. “If there were any other option, that man would be stripped of his title.”

This is news to Felix, although it makes perfect sense. Even when his father was alive, the Margrave made simple matters extraordinarily difficult, always opposing Rodrigue at every turn. It only became worse once King Lambert died and Miklan fled into the wilds, but with no one to take up the position, Anschutz ultimately retained his power and influence.

And now Sylvain, the man’s own son and only competitor, is across the mountains in Sreng for who knows how long. It only makes sense that Anschutz has gotten bold when they have no alternative.

“I’m sorry things went down like that, Felix,” Ingrid says apologetically. “We were waiting for you when he showed up, and you know how he is. Loves to hear his own voice.”

“All he really did was complain about Sylvain,” Ashe adds.

“And those ‘northern savages,’” Dedue says darkly. Ashe lays a hand on his arm comfortingly, though Ingrid glances away, seemingly uncomfortable. Felix knows she had to confront her biases in a big way during the war and is still dealing with the shame of it. She and Dedue are now on better terms than they’ve ever been, but Felix would be surprised if some things weren’t still sensitive. “I truly wanted to punch him.”

“Get in line,” Felix grumbles. “What I wouldn’t give for Sylvain to come back and rip that man’s position out from under him.”

To that, Ashe sighs. “We can only dream, I guess.”

~

Felix pushes the incident to the back of his mind, though he resolves to revisit it once the festivities for Josephine have ended.

Mercedes and Annette arrive the same evening as Felix, and Josephine nearly glows when she sees them, kicking her legs and screeching until Annette scoops her up to litter her face with incessant pecks. Dimitri and Byleth adjourn court early to join them, and they’re led to the same parlor where they met Josephine for the first time, now decorated with streamers and flowers, tables piled high with foods Josephine has never even tried before.

She makes an absolute mess of the cake she’s given, her hands covered in frosting that inevitably winds up in Felix’s face and hair. Mercedes helps Felix clean up while Annette and Elizabet set to work opening Josephine’s presents, pulling forth all assortments of gifts from dresses to shoes to children’s storybooks.

Josephine seems to care more about all the attention she’s getting than the presents themselves, but Felix thanks his friends all the same. “The little pink shoes are from Ferdinand,” Ashe says. “He was so upset he couldn’t be here. He left for Brigid just the other day.”

Felix nods, gently bouncing Josephine on his knee as she plays with the bows that had tied some of her gifts together. He’d spoken with Ferdinand at the wedding about his new position as the Brigid Ambassador. He was the only one of them who’d once had a close relationship with Petra, so it made sense that he would be given the title.

But Felix also knows that Ferdinand and Petra have a long history made complicated by their past relations to Edelgard. Regardless of Brigid’s neutrality during the war, Petra had fought alongside the Emperor for a time. She’d ultimately conceded at Gronder and entered into an official non-aggression pact with Fhargeus not long after, but the situation remains complicated to this day.

“He had some misgivings about going,” Byleth says quietly. “He still thinks of Petra fondly, even if things did go sour between them. I hope they’ll both find some closure.”

Dimitri takes her hand, thumb stroking over her knuckles comfortingly although he doesn’t say a word. Felix watches with an odd sort of ache in his chest, and he holds Josephine closer, suddenly wishing they were home.

“Okay,” Ingrid says abruptly, leaning over to pick up a brown package tied together with twine. She passes it off to Elizabet, who turns to hand it to Felix. “Let’s not get all sad. The birthday girl still has another present to open.”

Felix gingerly takes the package from Elizabet. “What is this?”

“It’s from Sylvain.”

Felix is quiet as he watches Josephine smack the package in Felix’s hand. “He sent this?” he eventually asks, acutely aware of all the eyes on him. “From Sreng?”

Ingrid nods, offering him a small yet encouraging smile. “He sent it pretty early,” she explains. “Just wanted to make sure it was on time, I guess.”

Felix isn’t sure what to say to that, so he just stays quiet as he loosens the twine and lets Josephine have at the paper. There’s no rhyme or reason to the way she swats and grabs at it, but eventually she shifts the wrapping enough to uncover the gift inside.

It’s a doll. It looks nothing like the ones Felix has seen in Fhirdiad storefronts, the ones made of porcelain and velvet, never meant to be handled more than once. This one looks like it was sewn together by hand, different colored clothes stitched together to create the mosaic of a person. It’s wearing a dress of soft, royal blue with turquoise trim. Small, blue buttons for eyes, brown string for hair.

Josephine grabs it from Felix to shove her face in it. It’s her favorite way to explore new textures, and from the way she squirms happily in Felix’s lap, the doll has passed inspection.

Beneath the doll lies a note.

_To Josie,_

_In Sreng, it’s custom for all little boys and girls to receive personalized dolls for their first birthday, commissioned by their parents or relatives. They’re supposed to symbolize their wishes and hopes for the future, or represent a future, idealized self._

_I met a very nice woman in Southern Sreng who makes these dolls for a living, and when I told her your first birthday was coming up, she insisted on making one for you. I had her stitch all the hopes and dreams your dad must have for you into every seam, so even if he isn’t right by your side, you can still have a piece of him with you._

_I’m sorry I can’t be there to celebrate with you all. And I may not be back for a long time, but I’ll still be thinking of you on your birthdays. You’re pretty much a miracle, you know. Not everyone made it through the past year, but you did. That will always be worth celebrating._

_Happy birthday,_

_Sylvain_

~

“Felix,” Lydia says. She stands at the entrance to his study with her hands clasped in front of her. She comes to check on him often now ever since they returned from Fhirdiad, and although Felix appreciates her concern, he can’t help but feel a little suffocated. “Would you mind terribly if I took your swords to be cleaned? It’s been a while since they were cleaned.”

Felix doesn’t quite see the point in having them cleaned regularly when they don’t see any use, but he isn’t in the mood to argue, so he only nods. He steps away from Josephine’s cradle where she’s playing with her new doll. It hasn’t left her side once since they returned home, accompanying her through meals, baths, naps, and even trips to the stable. She loves the thing more than any of the multitude of toys or trinkets she’s ever gotten, and Felix doesn’t know how to feel about it.

Felix hasn’t touched these swords in almost a year. He sees them every day, and they’re just as much a part of the decor as anything else in the room. So, Felix doesn’t think much of it as he reaches out to take the first one down, fingers grasping the hilt in a way he has a thousand times before.

_Stay back! Stay back, Felix, I mean it!_

The sword slips through Felix’s fingers and falls to the floor with a _clang._ He stares down at it, eyes wide, and wonders when the room got so cold.

Lydia takes him by the arm, and Felix thinks she must be calling his name, but all he hears is Bernadetta crying. He’d killed her. She’d been someone’s child, and Felix just took her away. 

“Dada!” Bernadetta cries, but it isn’t Bernadetta at all. It’s _Felix’s_ child, scared by the noise and calling for him.

Felix shakes out of Lydia’s grip and makes his way over to the crib. Josephine is already reaching for him, her doll tucked under her arm, but when he tries to pick her up, he can’t seem to get a decent enough grip. “Stop,” Lydia says, appearing again at his side. “Stop, Felix, just – Here, sit down. Sit _down._ ”

Felix sits down, but he can barely catch his breath. Josephine is still crying, and Felix itches to hold her, though distantly, he doesn’t think he can. He watches passively as Lydia lifts Josephine from the crib, gently shushing her whimpers and cries in Felix’s stead.

When Lydia turns back to him, her eyes are dark and familiar in a way Felix can’t help but latch onto. “Just breathe, Felix,” she says. “You’re home now. Nothing bad can happen to any of us here.”

Felix nods, though it hurts. His entire body aches like it did during the war, when he woke up every day with new bruises and reopened wounds. Still, he breathes like Lydia told him to, and eventually, the noises in his head stop and his hands no longer shake.

“Okay,” he says eventually. “I’m – I’m okay. You can give her to me.”

Lydia seems skeptical, but she doesn’t dare argue, leaning over to place Josephine in Felix’s arms. “Dada,” Josephine whines in his good ear. “Loud.”

“I’m sorry,” Felix says, feeling as if he’s about to cry.

“Don’t worry about the swords,” Lydia says gently, turning to gather the one Felix dropped before taking the second down from the wall. “I’ll deal with them from now on.”

Felix wants to argue with her, though he stays quiet, mostly still in shock over what just occurred. He’s never had a reaction like _that_ to the weapons that carried him through the war, but it’s not like he’s interacted with them recently. Felix wonders if maybe he’d been subconsciously avoiding them for this very reason.

It’s hard not to feel like a failure as Lydia casts him one last look before leaving the room. The silence she leaves behind hurts in a way Felix isn’t used to, and even with Josephine sniffling quietly in his arms, he struggles to find something else to occupy his thoughts.

To Felix’s relief and devastation, the first thing he manages to focus on is Sylvain’s letter to Josephine. It’s just been sitting on his desk for days; Felix hasn’t touched or even looked at it since Josephine’s birthday. Felix reaches for it now, however, carefully unfolding the parchment with one hand while his other arm cradles Josephine.

Felix stares at the words for so long that they start to blur together. He blinks a few times to clear his vision, and after taking a deep breath, he begins to read aloud.

“To Josie… ”


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Time skip in this chapter! We're at the halfway point!

Felix has just finished latching his travel case when he hears quick footsteps out in the hall. “No running inside!” he calls over his shoulder, and the footsteps slow only marginally before his bedroom door – which he’d left cracked – swings open.

“Daddy!” Josephine is panting, hair wild and cheeks red as she scampers into the room. She’d been playing outside last Felix heard, and he takes in her bare feet and just thanks the Goddess it hasn’t rained recently. “Are you done? Can we go?”

“Almost,” Felix says. “Weren’t we trying to be patient today?”

Josephine ducks her head, worrying at the hem of her dress almost shyly. It’s remarkably clean for the day she’s had, up at dawn and worming her way into Felix’s bed to ask if it was time to leave. She’d been fussy and impatient all morning, trailing Felix as he packed and delegated certain things to be taken care of while he was gone. Eventually, Sera had come to distract the little five-year-old, taking her by the hand and leading her to the stables to help brush the horses.

It’s been a little over thirty minutes since then. Felix is surprised Josephine lasted even that long.

“Been trying,” Josephine says sullenly, lips pursed in a pout. “It’s hard, I’m too happy.”

Felix smiles as he goes to her, settling into a crouch so he can smooth the wayward set of her bangs. “I know it’s exciting. You’ve never been to Garreg Mach before, and you’ll get to see all your aunts and uncles. I’m really proud of you for waiting this long. Just hang on a little longer, okay?”

Josephine bobs her head furiously, and Felix gives up on straightening out her hair. He’ll try later in the carriage when she’s fast asleep. “I’ll be good,” she says earnestly, “so I can play horsey with Uncle Ferdie.”

“I’m sure he’ll be more than happy to.”

“Will Auntie Annie and Mercie be there?”

“Mhm. And Ingrid, Ashe, DeeDee, Lysithea, Dimitri, and Byleth. All your favorite people.”

“Sylvain, too?”

Her blue eyes are so wide and hopeful, and Felix swallows as he stands, shaking his hair out of his eyes. “We’ll see,” he says. He doesn’t want to break her heart in case something comes up and Sylvain stays in Sreng for another year. Josephine only knows Sylvain through the letters he’s sent on her birthday for the past five years, but she’s almost as attached to him as she is to Felix’s other friends. “But we’ll have fun even if he’s not there, okay?”

“Okay, Daddy,” Josephine says, but she isn’t quite old enough to hide her disappointment from him. “I’ll be sad, though.”

Felix nods, scooping her up to balance her on his left hip. “That’s okay. We’re allowed to be sad, remember? You just have to tell me, and then I’ll fix it.”

“Did you get my special box?” Josephine asks as Felix hauls his bag off his bed with his free hand.

As if she even has to ask. Felix wouldn’t get a single night’s sleep while they were gone if he somehow managed to forget it. “I grabbed it, don’t worry. It’s with the rest of your things in the carriage. Minnie, too.”

Josephine perks up, giggling to herself as Felix carries her out of the room. Minnie has been her constant companion since Sylvain gifted the doll to her years ago. One of the inseams had torn slightly when Josephine handled her too roughly in the heat of a tantrum, and she’d sobbed for _hours,_ long after Lydia stitched Minnie back together.

She’s more careful with her now, even to the point that she won’t take her outside as she used to. With that in mind, Felix had taken the doll from his daughter’s room earlier and packed it with the rest of her things, lest one of them leave her behind and end up miserable for it.

Lydia meets them in the foyer, eyeing the both of them with a smile as she takes in their likely ragged appearances. “We’re all ready, then? Are we forgetting anything?”

“Shoes, Daddy,” Josephine exclaims suddenly, kicking her legs around Felix’s waist. “I forgot them!”

“Alright, go and get your sandals,” Felix says as he sets her down on the floor.

She fixes him with a blazing look. “Don’t leave without me,” she orders before making a dash for her room.

“No running inside!” Felix calls after her, and he heaves a put-upon sigh as Lydia laughs at him. “Tell me why I let you talk me into this again?”

“Because you haven’t taken a vacation since you were a child,” Lydia says, following him out the door as he approaches the awaiting carriage and hauls the last of his bags inside. The midday summer sun is as pleasant as ever – Northern summers have always been tepid at best – and he mentally bemoans how hot it will be at Garreg Mach. “And it will make Josephine happy.”

“Anything for her,” Felix says, mostly to himself. “Just don’t be surprised if we end up coming home early. There will still be classes going on. It’s not like we’ll just have the whole academy to ourselves.”

“You’ll make it work,” Lydia chides, and Felix almost rolls his eyes. Honestly, why does he even try? “Make sure to be nice.”

“I’m always nice.”

Josephine comes running from the house before Lydia can make any further comment. In addition to her shoes, she’s wearing an entirely new dress, white with green and yellow flowers. Felix supposes it could’ve been worse. Ever since Josephine gained the autonomy to dress herself, she changes clothes at the slightest whim, and sometimes the combinations she comes up with warrant a double take.

“I’m ready,” Josephine chirps as she scampers up to them.

“Where’s my hug?” Lydia asks, crouching down and opening her arms so Josephine can leap into them. “Did you say goodbye to everyone?”

Josephine nods into Lydia’s shoulder. “Mhm. I was sad. I want everyone to come.”

“You’ll have a wonderful time with your father,” Lydia tells her. “The rest of us will have our vacation here. We’ll have our own fun.”

Josephine pulls away to peer up into Lydia’s face. “Promise?”

“Promise.” Lydia stands up, and Felix extends his hand to Josephine when she reaches for him. “We’ll see you two at the end of the summer. Remember everything you do so you can tell us when you come home.”

“I will,” Josephine says, and they’re off.

~

In the four years since Garreg Mach’s reopening, Felix has made any number of excuses to avoid going there. At first, it was because Josephine was too young, and he couldn’t cart her across the kingdom on a whim. Then, it was because he was too busy. The orphanages were just getting up and running, and it would be unwise to leave during such a critical period.

These days, with Josephine as active as ever, Felix just couldn’t make the same excuses. Ashe had casually dropped the idea of spending the summer at Garreg Mach when he and Dedue visited in the spring, and Josephine had immediately latched onto the idea, never giving Felix a moment’s peace until he agreed.

It’s worth it to see the awe and excitement in Josephine’s eyes as they finally arrive and are able to explore, but Felix can’t help but feel unsettled. He never once lets go of her hand, letting her tug him in every direction whenever she spots something even remotely interesting. They don’t run into nearly as many students as Felix had feared. As usual, the richer kids are off on vacation with their families, so the suffocating feeling Felix had been expecting never quite comes.

Even so, Felix wants to be home. Despite the restoration, this place is entirely too familiar in a way Felix is uncomfortable with.

“It’s so big, Daddy,” Josephine gasps at his side. They’ve just left the reception hall and are standing just before the bridge leading up to the church. Josephine tilts her head so far back as she stares up at it that she nearly loses her balance, the only thing keeping her upright being Felix’s grip on her hand.

“Really?” Felix asks her. “Even bigger than Dimitri and Byleth’s castle?”

After a moment of deep thought, Josephine shakes her head. “No, but it’s _huge._ ”

“Felix!” a voice calls before either of them can say anything else.

Byleth is walking toward them, coming from the direction of the cemetery. Josephine squeals when she sees her, letting go of Felix’s hand to run to the Archbishop and Queen before he can even think to stop her. “Auntie Byleth!” Josephine cries, clutching at Byleth’s dress while Felix looks on. That will be a hard habit to break. “I missed you!”

The woman smiles, running a gentle hand over the top of Josephine’s head. “I missed you, too. And you, Felix. I’m glad you decided to come.”

“It will be good for Josephine,” Felix replies as he walks over to them. “She hasn’t really spent a lot of time outside of Fraldarius.”

“Is that yours, Auntie Byleth?” Josephine asks, pointing toward the church. “Is that where you work?”

“It’s one of the places I work,” Byleth explains. “And I don’t own it, no. The church belongs to everyone.”

“Even me?”

“Even you, if you want.”

Josephine turns on Felix, eyes wide. “You never told me!”

Felix raises his hands in surrender. “I’m sorry. I must’ve forgotten.”

“Daddy’s silly,” Josephine tells Byleth, to which the Queen nods gravely and says, “The silliest.”

“Okay,” Felix sighs while the girls giggle. “Where’s everyone else?”

“Ashe and Ingrid are in class,” Byleth says. “Lysithea should still be in the infirmary, and Annette and Mercedes are leading choir practice for me. They should all be done soon, if you want to head to the dining hall and wait for them. Are you hungry, Josephine?”

Josephine nods, looking between Felix and Byleth with wide eyes. “Can I have chicken?”

“I remembered that’s your favorite,” says Byleth. “If you have a word with the staff, they may just prepare Daphnel Stew for you.”

Josephine claps in delight, despite not having a single clue what that is, and Felix can’t help his small smile.

The dining hall is the same as Felix remembers it: same elongated tables, same tacky light fixtures. He wonders who had the final say when everything underwent a redesign after the war, if they took comfort and found respite in the familiarity. For Felix, all it does is remind him that he’s no longer the person he was. With Josephine’s hand warm in his own, every worry and grievance he’d ever felt in this room feels so trivial in retrospect.

Daphnel Stew isn’t the day’s official menu, but one look at Josephine’s big blue eyes and the cooks are basically scrambling to give her what she wants. Felix stands there and wonders if they recognize him, though it’s not like he recognizes any of them. This could be the exact same staff, and Felix would have no idea.

“Thank you,” Josephine says brightly once her food is finally brought out. “Are you eating, Daddy?”

Felix shakes his head. “I’m not hungry,” he tells her. He doubts he’d even taste anything if he did eat, what with how unsettled and jumpy he feels. “Don’t worry about me, just enjoy your dinner.” 

Josephine nods, though her eyes narrow as she peers down to inspect her soup. She’s entirely too keen for her own good, and Felix hides his smile behind his hand as he watches her. “Daddy,” whispers Josephine, exactly when Felix expects her to. “I don’t think I like this.”

“Is it too hot?” he asks.

Josephine shakes her head, eyeing the line of cooks behind the counter just feet away before saying, “It has onions.”

“Ah,” Felix says, nodding. “Those aren’t your favorite. But didn’t you promise Lydia you would try to eat things you didn’t like?”

His daughter’s resulting pout is entirely too endearing. “But it’s just me and Daddy,” she mumbles.

“You know Lydia always finds out,” Felix reminds her, and Josephine stares at him with wide eyes. “She’ll be very disappointed when we get home. Didn’t you also promise her you would tell her about _everything_ you do while we’re here?”

Josephine is silent, staring forlornly at the soup before her. Felix is prepared to eat it himself if Josephine ultimately refuses, but he at least has to try, or else Josephine won’t be the only one Lydia scolds upon their return. Even so, Felix watches with a hint of pride in his chest as Josephine picks up her spoon and begins to eat, cautiously at first, and then with more fervor.

“Is it good?” he asks. “I bet you can barely taste the onions.”

Josephine nods tentatively. Despite being so young, she _hates_ admitting when she’s wrong. They’re similar in that way, among others. “S’good,” she says around her spoon.

While Felix watches Josephine eat, a few groups of students come filtering into the dining hall. Assuming classes have ended for the evening, Felix keeps an eye out for his friends. He wasn’t sure what to make of Ingrid’s and Ashe’s decision to become adjuncts at the academy when they initially told him. Lysithea took over Manuela’s position as soon as Garreg Mach reopened, and as far as Felix can tell, she’s well suited for it. Annette and Mercedes really only help out when they come to visit, but Ingrid and Ashe have spent most of their summers here for the past three years.

From his letters alone, Felix has gathered that Ashe in particular is committed to teaching. He considers it an additional duty of being a knight, raising the next generation to be strong, capable, and just. Ingrid’s reasons are more inscrutable, but Felix knows when to leave well enough alone where she’s concerned. He just can’t imagine doing something like this himself.

As much as he would’ve hated to admit it as a teenager, being Duke suits him; although, there isn’t much use for a Shield who never sees the battlefield.

Felix spots Ingrid before his thoughts can wander somewhere dangerous. He lifts a hand in greeting, and the grin that splits across her face brings him entirely too much relief. Josephine makes an excited sound next to him, kicking her legs underneath the table. “Make sure you swallow,” he reminds her.

“ _Auntie Ingrid_!” Josephine screeches once she’s done just that, hopping down off her chair to round the edge of the table and run for Ingrid. The students jump out of her way, some of them with wide, confused eyes, others laughing behind their hands.

Ingrid drops into a crouch so Josephine can crash into her, sweeping the child up in her arms and pressing kisses all over her face. Felix nearly bursts into laughter at the shocked expressions on the students’ faces. Ingrid isn’t exactly a hard ass, but he’s almost certain this is a side of her that her students have never seen.

“Your dad finally stopped cooping you up in that house, huh?” Ingrid says as she walks over, winking at Felix when he scowls at her. “It’s about time. This place could use a little cutie like you running around.”

“I saw the church,” Josephine says excitedly. “Auntie Byleth said it belongs to everyone. Even me and you!”

Ingrid nods, setting Josephine back on the ground so she can hurry back to her seat. She scrambles up onto the chair knees first, and Felix keeps a hand on the back of the chair to steady it. “That’s right,” says Ingrid as she sits down across from Felix. “Even your godless father has a place there.”

Felix rolls his eyes. “It’s good to see you too, Ingrid. The trip was uneventful, thanks for asking.”

“Are you excited to spend the summer with us, Josie?” Ingrid asks his daughter, ignoring Felix completely. “You’ve been waiting for this for a long time.”

“Mhm, Daddy even said I can go flying with you!”

Ingrid’s eyebrows nearly raise to her hairline at that. “Oh, really? Wow, Felix, you’re going all out this summer.”

“Where’s Ashe and Lysithea?” Felix asks. He’s not about to sit here and let his friend tease him for being incapable of denying Josephine anything, not if he’s going to make it through this entire summer. “And Annette and Mercedes?”

“Ashe should be here soon unless he stayed behind to answer questions again. And there was an accident at the training grounds the other day, so Lysithea has her hands full at the moment. Annette and Mercedes usually stay behind to pray after choir practice, so they’ll probably be a while. They wouldn’t want us to wait for them anyway.”

Josephine bounces in her chair. “Is DeeDee with Uncle Ashe?”

Ingrid shakes her head. “Uncle DeeDee and His Majesty won’t be here for another moon, at least. They have very important things to do in Fhirdiad, but they’re excited to come and see you.”

“What about Sylvain?” Felix asks before Josephine gets the chance.

“Last I heard, he was still coming,” Ingrid says, eyes flickering back and forth between Felix and Josephine, who’s quietly nursing her soup. “I think we’re close to a non-aggression pact with Sreng, but nothing official has happened yet.”

“A non-aggression pact? Not an alliance like the one with Brigid?”

“Sylvain doesn’t think they’re ready for that yet. They believe Dimitri doesn’t want more conflict, but not all the chiefs are willing to just make peace with what happened in the last war. There will have to be concessions on our side, I think. Sylvain and Dimitri are going to discuss it while they’re here.”

Felix nods, chin in his hand as he ponders the situation. Sylvain doesn’t talk much about his duties as an envoy in his letters, not that Felix has ever asked. Most of what he knows regarding the Sreng situation comes from Ingrid and Dimitri, but not a day goes by where Felix doesn’t worry about it.

If things go south for some reason, Sylvain is as good a hostage as any. It’s unlikely it will come to that after he’s lived among them for four years, but Felix knows better than to let his guard down. Nothing short of Sylvain’s permanent return will assuage Felix’s fears.

“Ferdinand will be here any day though,” Ingrid continues. “And I heard he has a present for you, Josie.”

Josephine perks up, although Felix just feels weary. Ferdinand has the tendency to go overboard with his gifts. Josephine’s third birthday present was a gray-dappled pony she couldn’t even _ride._ Princess has since joined the other horses in the stable at home – and is lavished often with treats and attention by Josephine – but Felix is still nowhere near ready to allow Josephine to learn to ride her.

“C’mon, Felix, it’s not like he’s going to give her another horse,” Ingrid says, as if reading Felix’s mind.

“He better not,” Felix replies. “We have more horses than we need.”

“What about a pegasus?”

Josephine gasps, and Felix grits his teeth while Ingrid smirks at him. “Can we, Daddy? Can we have one?”

“… Maybe,” says Felix. Goddess, does he need a backbone. And a new best friend.

~

Later that night, Felix has only just finished brushing and braiding Josephine’s hair when she rounds on him. “Can I get my special box?” she asks.

“Of course,” he says, setting her hairbrush aside as Josephine hops down from his lap and rushes to her suitcases. She wiggles excitedly in her pink nightgown as she tears through all her clothes and toys, tossing them haphazardly while Felix watches in exasperation.

When she turns back to him, she has Minnie tucked into her elbow and the box in her hands. It’s more of a small chest, really, gifted to Josephine for her third birthday by Dedue. The trim and latch are gold, simple enough that Josephine could open it on her own if she really wanted to, though she always defers to Felix.

“You can pick whichever one you want,” Felix says as Josephine clambers onto the bed. “Do you want me to read it to you?”

Josephine nods eagerly. Felix watches her sift through the box, and the letter she ends up pulling out is a familiar one. In addition to her normal storybooks, Felix has been using the letters Elizabet and Sylvain write to Josephine to teach her to read. The letters are her favorite – special enough to warrant being kept in her box – and hardly a night goes by where Josephine isn’t lulled to sleep by the sound of Felix reading one to her.

No words can describe how Felix feels on the nights she chooses one of Sylvain’s letters. He’s written to the both of them over the past four years, but the ones specifically meant for Josephine… well, Felix has a hard time reading those.

Felix settles back against the pillows as he unfolds the letter, extending an arm so Josephine can curl up into his side, head on his chest. “‘To Frannie,’” Felix begins, pausing when Josephine squirms happily. She has all sorts of nicknames, but this one belongs entirely to her and Sylvain. “‘I know I’ve told you before, but there’s a lot of sand in Sreng. It goes on for miles, farther than the eye can see, and it’s way too easy to get lost. It’s nothing at all like back home, where I could walk in any direction and eventually find someone to tell me where to go. I have my own guide here, and he’s never left me alone for a second. I don’t think he trusts me very much. Frankly, I wouldn’t trust me if I were him either.’”

Josephine always laughs at this part. She thinks Sylvain is the silliest person she knows, even if she doesn’t truly remember him. Everything he writes about is funny and exotic to her, and although Felix is used to Sylvain’s antics, anything that makes his daughter laugh is worthwhile to him.

“‘The other day, I managed to give him the slip to go exploring on my own. It’s not in my nature to be serious and businesslike all the time, and I wanted to have some fun on my own without him herding me in the other direction. Big mistake. _Huge_ mistake. But I wouldn’t take it back if I could, because I ended up finding something pretty cool.’”

“My rocks!” Josephine pipes up. “This is when he found my rocks.”

Felix smiles to himself and nods before he continues to read. “‘It didn’t take me long to realize I’d gotten lost. The wind had wiped away any footprints I’d made, and I couldn’t see the camp in any direction. I really had no other choice but to keep walking, but I didn’t have any fun at all. It was so hot that day, and I barely had any water on me. I wondered how long it would take anyone to find me. It’s pretty scary to be on your own, isn’t it? You’re pretty lucky to have your dad around. He was the only person who could hunt me down no matter where I went. Maybe if he’d been with me that day, I wouldn’t have gotten lost at all.’”

Josephine pats Felix’s chest a few times. “You’re good at hide-and-seek, Daddy. You always find me.”

“I’ve had a lot of practice,” Felix tells her, though he keeps the details to himself. He remembers their teenage years probably as well as Sylvain does, if not more so. Felix tracked that insufferable man to any number of bars, brothels, and enemy camps to drag him back before he did anything too stupid. He hadn’t always made it in time, but he’d tried.

“‘Just when I thought maybe I’d be lost in that desert forever, I saw a flock of birds heading east. The first thing they taught me when I got here was to always follow the birds if I got lost, so I did. And guess what, Frannie? They led me to the prettiest lake I’d ever seen. Water is pretty scarce in that part of Sreng, so I never expected to find any at all, let alone an entire lake. It was the clearest water I’d ever seen, and there were pretty stones at the bottom, smooth and perfectly rounded. No jagged edges at all. I immediately thought of you when I saw them, so I figured, hey, if I ever get out of this desert, at least I’ll have a nice gift for Frannie on her birthday.”

The stones in question are at home, sitting on Josephine’s nightstand. She smooths her hands over them and holds them to her cheeks on hot days, and no one else is allowed to touch them.

“‘I went for a swim and disturbed all the local wildlife, which I’m one hundred percent not supposed to do. But it was hot, and I was all alone. What else was I supposed to do, Frannie? Would you have gone for a swim?’”

Josephine nods. “I would’ve gone swimming.”

“You can’t swim,” Felix reminds her. “I could teach you while we’re here if you want.”

“Yes, yes! I wanna swim with DeeDee and Sylvain!”

Felix laughs to himself, trying to imagine Dedue swimming in Garreg Mach’s fishing pool. The idea would’ve been incomprehensible before, but maybe now things would be different. Hardly anyone can deny Josephine, and if they get Ashe involved, then Dedue won’t stand a chance.

“‘Eventually, a search party came to get me. I’m still not very fluent in the language, but I’m pretty certain those guys were talking to themselves about what a useless envoy I was. But joke’s on them. I found water all on my own _and_ a handful of pretty stones. I’m a lot of things, but useless isn’t one of them.’”

“Sylvain’s the best,” Josephine says in a pout. She always gets offended during this part of the story, as if Sylvain being stupid and doing what he shouldn’t be is something worth defending. “Those people were mean.”

Felix shakes his head. “They weren’t being mean. Wouldn’t you be worried if someone you were supposed to take care of wandered off on their own? What if I got lost, and you couldn’t find me?”

“I’d cry,” Josephine says without hesitation. “I’d cry, and you’d come get me.”

“Well, let’s hope I don’t get lost, then.”

“Keep going, Daddy, it’s almost over!”

“‘All this to say,’” Felix continues, “‘I made a pretty bad decision and put myself in a situation that could’ve gone way worse than it did. But I’m thankful the people I was staying with managed to find me, and I’m thankful I found a good gift for you. It’s hard for me to believe that you’re turning three soon. I remember the day your dad found you and decided to take you home. It was a pretty sad day, but you managed to make everyone smile despite the circumstances. And even though I haven’t been around, I know that you make your dad and all your favorite people just as happy as they make you. That’s what I wish the most for you every year on your birthday. Happiness. Love, Sylvain.’”

“That’s one of my favorites,” Josephine says softly. When Felix glances down at her, her eyes are beginning to droop. “I wanna go there.”

“To Sreng?” Felix considers it. The journey wouldn’t be at all fun, but if Sylvain’s efforts pay off, that may very well be doable in the future. “I don’t see why not. Maybe someday, when you’re a little older.”

Josephine hums, and Felix remains quiet, looking over the old letter again as Josephine grows heavier against him. He still hasn’t quite gotten used to the way Sylvain talks to Josephine in these letters. They barely spent any time together at all before Sylvain left for Sreng, but he writes as if he’s speaking to an old friend. Someone he’s known forever, someone he cares about. And he has Josephine entirely wrapped around his finger.

It’s just another way in which she and Felix are similar.

“Daddy,” Josephine says, startling Felix momentarily, who’d thought she’d fallen asleep. “Will Sylvain be here tomorrow?”

Felix is quiet as he refolds the letter. He sits up, carefully pulling Josephine with him, and places the letter back in the box. “We’ll see,” Felix says eventually. “He could be here tomorrow or next week. We’ll just have to be patient.”

Josephine says nothing, but she pulls Minnie close to her chest. She watches as Felix moves the box to the bedside table before turning back to the bed to tuck her in. “I had lots of fun today,” she tells him. Her hair seems even darker against the white pillows, and Felix rearranges her braid so it rests over her shoulder. “I liked the onion stew.”

“I’m glad,” Felix says softly, smoothing a hand over her head. “I’m proud of you for trying new things, sweetheart. Are you proud of yourself?”

Josephine nods, smiling widely before it breaks open into a yawn. “Happy, too. M’happy we came, Daddy.”

Felix continues to stroke her hair as she nods off, and only when her tight grip on Minnie goes slack in sleep does he pull away. He then loosens his own hair from its ponytail, shaking it out and breathing a slight sigh of relief at the release of tension. Felix readies himself for bed in the dim candlelight, mostly ignoring the room and its familiarities as he quietly moves around. This isn’t Felix’s old room, but all the dorms look similar enough that the effect is still the same.

Going through his and Josephine’s normal routine was enough to distract him for a while, but now that she’s gone quiet, the stressors from the day are creeping back in. Logically, Felix knows he has no reason to be feeling like this. The worst of the war took place outside of Garreg Mach’s walls. This isn’t Gronder, or Fort Merceus, or even Enbarr. So, _why?_ Why does he feel like this?

Felix quietly scoffs. Twenty-six years old and rattled by some buildings. What would Glenn and Rodrigue think of Felix now?

“Get it together,” Felix whispers in the quiet, and then he blows out the candle.


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I remembered halfway through editing this that Felix has an uncle, but we're just going to ignore that. He probably sucks anyway.
> 
> The next chapter should be out either tomorrow or the next day, so watch out for it!

There is no warning when Sylvain arrives. In fact, Felix has comfortably settled into the idea that the man may not come at all, and he’s already prepared a number of activities to distract Josephine from her disappointment. But nearly three weeks into their stay at Garreg Mach, all of Felix’s plans are for naught.

After breakfast that morning, Felix takes Josephine to the greenhouse. Dedue speaks to her often of the work he did planting and harvesting as a student, and Felix’s daughter is nothing if not curious. The greenhouse is empty, so Felix lets Josephine take her time poking around. She gets excited over the smallest sprouts just starting to take root, and she nearly begs Felix to infuse them with his magic.

Felix ultimately agrees, although he has his reservations. His magic is small but destructive, powerful strikes of lightning and raging infernos that he barely learned any control over. The larger his radius, the more chaotic, the better, he used to think. Byleth let it slip since he rarely used magic at all in battle, depending instead on his swordsmanship.

But with Josephine watching, Felix finds that it’s easy to be gentle. Healing magic was never his forte, but his arm tingles with a soft, warm energy as he extends his right hand over a pair of sprouts. His hand glows faintly, and once he’s finished, Felix thinks the sprouts are a little greener than they were before.

Josephine observes the plants keenly. She’s perched on the balls of her feet, hands atop her knees as she peers down into the soil. “Nothing’s happening,” she says after a few moments.

Felix laughs. “We won’t notice anything for another day or so. But without that, it would’ve taken them weeks to grow.”

Josephine holds up her own hands, wiggling her fingers. “I want magic.”

“You’ll have to wait and see if it manifests,” Felix reminds her. Lysithea checked Josephine’s meridians when she was just two years old. The odds of her manifesting a Crest are slim to none, but magical affinity is more common, and Felix had wanted to be ready for anything. Just a simple exam had found that Josephine does have magic in her veins, though she’ll only find her affinity with time and patience. “It’ll happen eventually.”

“I want magic like yours,” Josephine says earnestly. “I wanna light candles, too.”

Felix laughs again. She’ll be able to do that and more if she develops magic like his. Before Felix can say anything, however, a shadow falls across the both of them, and when Felix glances up, he immediately loses his breath.

“Hey, Fe,” Sylvain says. He’s dressed casually in brown, form-fitting pants and a long-sleeved maroon shirt. He seems healthy, skin tanned darker than Felix has ever seen it, and the small, quirked smile he shoots Felix is heart-stopping in its familiarity. “You know, I think this is the first time I’ve ever seen you in here.”

Felix stays quiet, genuinely at a loss for words, although Sylvain isn’t deterred. His auburn eyes shift toward Josephine, who peers up at him curiously in the way she regards strangers. “And you, little lady,” Sylvain says, “must be Frannie.”

Josephine blinks. For a moment, she doesn’t react, but ever so slowly, her blue eyes widen, realization lighting up her entire face. “Sylvain?” Her voice is quiet and hesitant. Unsure. And Felix can barely _breathe._

Sylvain nods. “You weren’t even up to your dad’s knee the last time I saw you. Now you’re your own little person, huh?”

Felix stands on aching knees, and Josephine pops up with him, holding onto his pantleg. She looks at Sylvain as if he’s some sort of god, but her lingering shyness keeps her close to Felix for now. “I was wondering if you’d even show up,” Felix says, finally finding his voice. “You’re the last one. Even Dimitri and Dedue came early.”

“Blame Ferdinand,” Sylvain drawls, quirking an eyebrow. “I had to make a stop for him. Something about a present for Frannie.”

“Is it another pony?” Josephine pipes up.

“Not quite,” Sylvain laughs, hands on his hips. “I won’t spoil the surprise. You’ll have to go find him if you want it.”

“I’m having tea with him and Lysithea soon,” Felix says, though he isn’t sure who he’s speaking to. “I’m sure he planned it that way.”

Sylvain tilts his head, turning his attention back to Felix. “You’re a tea person now? What happened to it being barely above dishwater?”

Felix burns with memory. All the times he ignored Lorenz’s invitations before the war, every time he dismissed Ferdinand’s after. These days, tea has become one of the only things capable of soothing his ever-fraying nerves. There are other ways, of course, but Felix hasn’t touched a drop of alcohol since a few nights before they stormed Enbarr.

“It’s been years,” Felix says. “Things change.”

Sylvain’s smile dims only slightly. It’s an odd thing to witness after all this time. “Hopefully not too much.”

Ignore him _,_ Felix has to remind himself. Pay no mind to suggestion. Just keep moving.

“Do I still get to play with DeeDee and Ashe, Daddy?” Josephine asks, tilting her head up to look at him. “Even if I get my present?”

“Of course, so long as you make sure to thank Ferdinand.”

“You have a big day planned with Ashe and Dedue, Frannie?”

Josephine’s head bops excitedly. “We’re going fishing!”

Sylvain whistles lowly. “That sounds a lot more exciting than tea-time. You mind if I tag along?”

“Are you any good?”

“Not at all,” Sylvain replies, and he seems to revel in Josephine’s answering giggle. “Will you teach me?”

“Mhm, I can get my own worms and everything!”

“You just get better and better, don’t you?” Sylvain says, and Felix just knows that the rest of this summer is going to be damn near unbearable.

~

“A dog _,_ Ferdinand?” says Felix blandly as Josephine and Sylvain walk away, the damned beast prancing alongside them. “Really?”

“Not just any dog,” Ferdinand says into his teacup. “Clover is a purebred Aegir Hound, perfectly trained while I was away in Brigid.”

“She’s a cute little thing,” Lysithea comments. “Josephine’s obviously smitten already. You outdid yourself, Von Aegir.”

“It couldn’t have been a cat?” Felix asks, though it’s mostly rhetorical. Josephine isn’t nearly old enough to give a feline any sort of respectful distance. “A _dog._ I don’t think we’ve ever had one at our estate.”

Ferdinand shakes his head, leaning back in his chair and crossing his legs at the knee. His relaxed poise has some effect on Felix, and the nervous tension that’s been coursing through his body since Sylvain showed up begins to dissipate. It also helps that these little, hedged nooks just outside the reception hall are perfectly suited for quiet. Apparently, Ferdinand and Lysithea have been taking tea here since their academy days, and some part of Felix wishes he’d had more on his mind back then than sword fighting and policing Sylvain.

“A shame, really,” Ferdinand says. “I can’t imagine what my childhood would’ve been like were it not for my dogs. I wouldn’t have had a single friend.”

“Don’t be depressing,” Lysithea chides as she neatly cuts herself a slice of cake. She’s cut her hair since Felix last saw her, the snow-white strands falling just above her shoulders instead of spilling down her back. “And no offense, but those dogs were probably better company than any of the noble children in your circle.”

“None taken,” Ferdinand says cheerfully. “You’re entirely correct. If I’d been any closer with Edelgard and Hubert growing up, I may have just sided with Adrestia during the war.”

Lysithea wrinkles her nose. “You’re definitely not someone I would’ve wanted to see on the other side of the battlefield. You’d have ripped us to shreds.”

“Not you, dear Lysithea. Felix, on the other hand, perhaps.”

Felix rolls his eyes, taking a sip from his teacup. Almyran Pine Needles. It’s is the only tea he’s ever truly liked; Ferdinand’s memory is impeccable. “As if you could’ve even gotten close.”

“True,” Ferdinand says thoughtfully. “I would’ve had to fight past your own dark knight just to catch a glimpse of you.”

Felix chokes on his tea, coughing into his fist while Lysithea rubs between his shoulders. “That’s _not_ what I meant,” he wheezes, “and you know it.”

Ferdinand grins, and it’s the perfect combination of placating and shit-eating that only he can pull off. “Yes, Felix, of course. Speaking of, though, I couldn’t help but notice his decision to go with our darling Josephine.”

“And what of it?” Felix asks gruffly.

“Oh, nothing. They just seem to make quite the pair.”

“You’re having entirely too much fun with this, Ferdinand,” Lysithea comments. “Sylvain’s only been back a day, let them work things out on their own.”

“There’s nothing to work out,” Felix says, pointedly ignoring the way Lysithea and Ferdinand exchange a knowing glance. “She’s always wanted to meet Sylvain, and now she has. She’ll get it out of her system and realize he’s just like everyone else soon enough.”

Ferdinand shakes his head in exasperation but says nothing. “Why does he call her Frannie?” Lysithea asks. “I’ve never asked.”

“That’s just him being competitive,” Felix explains. “‘All our friends stole the name Josie like a bunch of vultures. I want something only _I_ can call her.’ So, he took her middle name and bastardized it.”

Lysithea laughs. “He said that? Goddess. I do think it’s pretty cute, though. And Josephine seems to like it.”

“Does she have a nickname for him?” Ferdinand asks. “I noticed she doesn’t call him uncle like the rest of us.”

“She’s always just called him Sylvain,” Felix says after a brief moment. Deep down, he knows he’s never once encouraged her to call him anything else. What does that say of him? “Who knows, maybe that will change after this summer.”

“Are you going to talk to him?” Lysithea asks. She’s generally good about avoiding the subject of Felix and Sylvain’s relationship. Much like everyone else, she doesn’t know the details surrounding the gradual estrangement between them, and perhaps that was Felix’s mistake. Anyone would be curious after all this time, even those who once made a habit of minding their business. “Or are we all just going to keep pretending things are normal?”

Felix’s fingers twitch around his cup. “I’m not sure why it bothers everyone so much,” he snaps. “The state of my relationship with Sylvain affects absolutely no one.”

“Well, that’s not true,” Lysithea says placidly. “It affected us very much during the war.”

Her words have no bite, but Felix recognizes the truth behind him. The Northern Pillars were as devastating as they were volatile. Their combined mental states could carry a battle or take the entire army right to the edge. “As your friends, we care about the two of you,” Ferdinand adds. “Although, I much prefer your company to his.”

“Agreed,” says Lysithea. “At least you say what you mean most of the time. You’re about the only one who could put up with him indefinitely.”

Some part of Felix reacts instinctively, rearing up in Sylvain’s defense. But he keeps quiet, mostly because he’s terrified of what he’ll blurt out in the moment.

“If I could speak plainly,” Ferdinand says after a moment.

Felix nods, even as dread settles in his stomach. “You always do.”

“I recognize a lot of myself in you these days.” Felix blinks at Ferdinand in surprise. He sounds deadly serious all of a sudden. His tone doesn’t at all align with a quiet tea break amongst friends. “We all lost loved ones during the war. I’m no exception.”

Lysithea seems just as thrown as Felix, though she quietly sets her fork aside as she listens to Ferdinand.

“From the moment I decided to follow you all, I knew my love was doomed for failure,” Ferdinand continues. “It haunted me for years, even more than my decision to abandon my name and homeland. I constantly wondered if things would’ve been different had I made another choice. But my ideals kept me from going too far down that path. I had to choose liberation over the person I loved.”

Felix swallows past the knot in his throat. “You’ve never said any of this before.”

Ferdinand shakes his head. “We’re all very different, but I’ve noticed we react to love and loss the same way. I’ve never thought to express any of this before, and I’m sure you’ve never heard Ingrid speak of dear Dorothea.”

And it’s a good thing, too. Felix never again wants to see Ingrid look the way she did when she’d taken Dorothea in her arms after spearing her through. Hearing Ingrid’s thoughts, hearing her vocalize how she’d felt that day, would absolutely break Felix.

“Hilda and Claude are the same way,” Lysithea says softly. “Things between Claude and Lorenz were always complicated, so I don’t blame Claude for leaving or refusing to talk about it. But Hilda… I don’t know. She and Marianne loved one another dearly, but after Marianne died, it was like she never existed. I still can’t even get Hilda to mention her name.”

Felix has carefully avoided thoughts of the classmates who fought by their side, the ones they weren’t able to save. The Golden Deer lost more than the Blue Lions, maybe due in part to the faction of the Alliance that sided with the Empire. Marianne, Ignatz, and Raphael were gone long before Byleth returned and the tides of war shifted.

“Names are powerful,” Ferdinand says. “Sometimes I have to say Hubert’s just to remind myself he existed. I’m probably the only one still alive who doesn’t speak it like a curse.”

The revelation is a shocking one, though Felix is careful to keep any emotion off his face. He remembers how Ferdinand and Hubert always seemed to be at one another’s throats. Their open hostility toward one another was often uncomfortable. More than once, Sylvain had suggested under his breath that they should just get it over with and fuck the tension out of one another, but Felix had always shrugged him off.

“It would’ve never worked out,” Ferdinand muses, and in that moment, he seems so much older than twenty-six. “Edelgard always came first, and I would’ve never been happy in a relationship where we didn’t put one another first and foremost. But that doesn’t make it hurt any less, even to this day.”

For the first time, Felix tries to remember that final battle in Enbarr. Where had Ferdinand been when Byleth and Dimitri cut Hubert down? Had he seen the whole thing, or had he stumbled upon Hubert’s body after? They hadn’t even given the man a proper burial. From what Felix heard, Hubert had joined Edelgard in the pyre, and that had been the end of it.

“You look like the rest of us, is all,” Ferdinand sighs, fixing Felix with a soft, somber look. “Like you lost a part of yourself in the war. But Sylvain’s still here, Felix. Things could end differently for you.”

“I have a hard time believing that,” Felix says, feeling strangled. The tension and fear are back, and even as Lysithea and Ferdinand look upon him with concern, there’s no way he could possibly explain. He’s awarded very little thought to what happened after Fort Merceus. To speak of it now seems cataclysmic, and Felix cannot allow himself to fall apart. Not while Josephine needs him. “I can’t – Just trust me when I say it’s better off left alone.”

“I believe you,” Lysithea says. Her expression is grave, pink eyes alight with the dark magic that runs through her veins. She may be the youngest of them all, but she’s always been fiercely loyal and protective. “It’s not just you anymore. You have Josephine to worry about, and you’ve always put her first. So, if you think staying away from Sylvain is best, I have no reason to doubt you.”

Ferdinand nods, though he seems less convinced. Whatever he may say, he’s always been the hopeless romantic type, and Felix doesn’t think he’ll be assuaged just with this. “Just don’t lose sight of your own needs in all of this,” Ferdinand says, and Felix nods even as he doesn’t take the advice to heart.

~

For a long time, Felix didn’t know what to tell Josephine about their family. The Fraldarius’ connection to the crown had ultimately decimated their bloodline, and Felix still hasn’t quite found the words to explain that to a child.

Lydia suggested he keep things as simple as possible. “She’ll come to better understand everything when she’s older,” the woman had told him. “There’s no need to get into the gritty details, but being honest will help her come to terms later on.”

Josephine calls Elizabet “Mama,” but she seems to understand that her connection to Elizabet is different from her connection to Felix. She also knows that she’s adopted, that her birthmother passed away years ago, and that Felix found her and took her home. Death is still something Josephine hasn’t truly come to terms with since she has no personal experience with it, but she understands that it’s a sad, terrible thing, and that Felix has lost many loved ones to it.

When Felix takes her to Rodrigue’s grave, it’s just before sunset. None of the others had offered to come along, seeming to understand that this is something Felix has to do by himself. Josephine must have picked up on his mood, because she didn’t protest when Felix carried her away, merely wrapped her arms around Felix’s neck and held fast.

The cemetery is deserted, though that’s to be expected. There are only three graves here, two of them belonging to people Felix had known personally. This is his first time visiting Rodrigue’s burial place since they left Garreg Mach to march on Enbarr years ago, and for a long moment, Felix doesn’t know what to do or say.

He remembers how he’d felt the last time he was here: furious yet resigned. Rodrigue had fulfilled his duty as a knight, and that was what was most important to him, so Felix wouldn’t let himself feel badly when Rodrigue surely wouldn’t have. Felix hadn’t the energy back then to mourn in any other capacity. All he could do was follow after his childhood friend, the man his father had died to save, and hope that everything would be worth it in the end.

“Daddy,” says Josephine, “what is this place?”

“It’s a cemetery like the one at home, where your grandmother and Uncle Glenn are,” Felix replies. “Your grandfather is here.”

Josephine stares down at the gravestone before them. “Grandpa?”

“He passed away a long time ago, before I adopted you. We couldn’t take him home, so we buried him here instead.”

Saying it aloud makes Felix feel terrible. There had been no way to bury Rodrigue in Fraldarius territory, though Felix would be lying if he said he’d felt strongly about it back then. Now, he’s all too aware of the distance between here and Fraldarius, where Glenn and their mother are buried – where _Felix_ will someday be buried. And here Rodrigue is, all alone.

“I didn’t bring any flowers,” Josephine says morosely. They’ve visited the Fraldarius cemetery before, and Josephine always brings flowers to leave on Glenn’s and their mother’s graves.

Felix readjusts her weight in his arms, pressing his forehead gently to hers. “We’ll come back another day. You can bring flowers, then.”

Josephine nods, though she says nothing. She stares at Rodrigue’s tombstone for a few long moments before pointing down at it. “It says our name. Like the ones at home.”

“Yeah.” Felix blinks the wetness out of his eyes. He still remembers how it felt to be the last member of his family. He’d never cared about being a Fraldarius until he was the only one left. But not anymore. “We’re a family. Our name ties us together.”

“I like being a Faldarus,” Josephine says decisively. She still trips over their last name, but her bold attempts never fail to bring a smile to Felix’s face. “Was Grandpa your daddy?”

“He was.”

“Did he play with you a lot?”

“Sometimes,” Felix says, because he doesn’t want to break her heart. “Not as often as I play with you, though.”

“Do you miss him?”

 _Every day,_ Felix thinks. His grief over his father is something that’s built up over time. It started in earnest after he adopted Josephine, and every day they’ve spent together since has left Felix yearning for the things he lost early in his childhood. More and more, he thinks he remembers how Rodrigue used to look at him and Glenn when he had to leave on business, when they were young and didn’t know it was pointless to beg him to stay. Like he was being torn apart from the inside. “I do miss him. I miss him and my brother very much.”

Josephine gently knocks her head against his. “Don’t cry, Daddy. Don’t be sad.”

“I’m okay,” Felix croaks, even as Josephine wipes at his tears with her palms. “Don’t worry about me, sweetheart.”

Josephine whines, burying her face in his neck, and Felix rubs her back, almost laughing at the absurdity of it all. “Now, don’t you start crying,” he tells her. “Daddy didn’t mean to make you sad.”

“I don’t want you to die,” Josephine says, muffled into Felix’s skin, and his entire body goes still.

“I won’t,” he says once his shock releases its stranglehold on his voice. Josephine has never said anything like this before. Was he wrong to bring her here? Was she just too young? “I’m not going anywhere, Josephine, I promise. I’ll be with you for a long time.”

Josephine sniffs, and Felix gazes quietly upon his father’s grave, wondering what to do. “Grandpa would’ve really loved you, you know.”

Josephine lifts her face out of his neck to fix Felix with watery eyes. “Really?”

Felix nods. “He’d have doted on you endlessly. I don’t think he ever thought he’d have grandchildren, so you would’ve been like a miracle in his eyes. Grandpa loved horses, just like you do. He would’ve taken you riding with him and bought you all the horses you wanted.”

“I love Grandpa, too,” says Josephine. “I bet he was really nice like you.”

And what a marvel that is. Felix doubts anyone else has ever described him as _nice_ before. He’d never wanted to be perceived that way, either, not until Josephine. “He was nice. He made a lot of mistakes when he was alive,” Felix says, “but I know now that he loved us. He loved Uncle Dimitri, too, and did everything he could for him. He was – I – ”

All Felix knows is what he wishes he would’ve said back then. Rodrigue deserved to hear it, at least once. “I’m proud of him,” he says. “And I’m glad he was my father.”

~

When Felix spots Sylvain standing outside the training grounds, his first instinct is to turn on his heel and walk away. The only thing that keeps him moving forward is his promise to Ingrid. “Hey,” Sylvain calls when he’s close enough. “I’ve been waiting for you. Where’s Frannie?”

“Napping,” Felix replies. “I left her in our room with Annette and Clover.”

“She really is a cute dog,” Sylvain says. “I think you’ll end up liking her.”

Felix sighs. “Maybe if she’s as well trained as Ferdinand claims. Did you catch his spiel about her being a guard dog? The thing is barely up to Josephine’s knee, and yet he made it sound like she’d bring down anyone who so much as _looked_ at Josephine wrong.”

Sylvain laughs, and for all the chaos his arrival has wreaked on Felix’s emotions, it’s still a sound Felix has missed. “Well, Clover’s pretty much just a puppy still. But she heels and stays better than most grown dogs I’ve seen, so I’m willing to bet Ferdinand knows what he’s talking about this time. Try not to worry about it, Fe.”

“Did Ingrid rope you into this, too?”

“Apparently,” Sylvain says with a strange, slightly mischievous look in his eyes, “her kids have been _begging_ to receive instruction from the legendary Northern Pillars.”

“Is that so,” Felix says, simmering beneath his skin. Ingrid hadn’t mentioned _that_ part to him. Only said some of her students were lousy with a sword and that she’d appreciate any pointers he could give them. “I hope we meet their standards.”

Sylvain grins cheekily. “I thought we could head in together. Really give ‘em the full effect.”

“We’d have to be covered in blood for that,” Felix says, shouldering past Sylvain to enter the training grounds. “I’m sure we’ve lost our charm now. Nothing too imposing about a foreign ambassador and a dad.”

The gathered students turn toward the entrance at the sound of Sylvain’s boisterous laughter. And Felix doesn’t know if he would’ve noticed had Sylvain not said anything, but he thinks he spies the awe in the kids’ faces when they look at them. Only Ingrid seems unimpressed at the sight of them, a quirked brow being her only reaction.

“You’re late,” she says.

“Sorry,” Felix tells her, though he isn’t. Not one bit, not after this obvious set-up. “Josephine was being a little fussy.”

Ingrid turns to Sylvain. “And what’s your excuse?”

Sylvain shrugs, linking his arms together behind his head. “I was waiting for Felix.” 

“Typical,” Ingrid says before she turns back to her students. “Alright, guys, these are my friends Felix and Sylvain. They’re pretty much the best at what they do, so I had them come by today as guest instructors. You’ll have them to yourselves for the hour, so get what you can out of them. Swordsmen go to Felix, lancers and axe-men, you’re with me and Sylvain.”

“You think you can handle all these kids on your own?” Sylvain asks, elbowing Felix in the side.

Felix rolls his eyes as he moves away. “It’s all I do these days.”

The students aren’t really as bad as Ingrid made them sound. It’s obvious they’ve never seen a real battle just from the way they hold their swords, though Felix doesn’t hold it against them. Byleth has taken great pains to ensure the area surrounding the monastery is safe and bandit free. In contrast to Rhea, her concern is making sure the students aren’t forced into battle until they’re ready; it’s a change Felix completely endorses.

“Widen your stance,” Felix tells the girl before him. Her classmates watch and listen, soaking up his every word. “You’re slight and probably light on your feet. You need to be able to move at a moment’s notice if you want to take advantage of that and outmaneuver your opponent.”

“Yes, Duke Fraldarius,” she says dutifully, and Felix barely manages to withhold a wince.

“Just Felix is fine. Don’t waste your breath on formalities with me.”

For the most part, he ignores Sylvain and Ingrid. They take a more hands-on approach, wielding training weapons to demonstrate what they’re saying with their own bodies. Meanwhile, Felix barely glances at the rack of training swords off to the side. He isn’t sure what his reaction would be to holding one of those as opposed to his own sword, but he definitely doesn’t want to find out in front of a crowd.

Although he tries to stay focused, it’s hard when Sylvain is close by. Felix can’t stand his own predictability as his eyes continuously stray, taken in by the way Sylvain’s shoulders flex just before he swings his axe. Back in the war, the ever-looming threat of death kept Felix from noticing certain things, but there’s no such filter here.

When Ingrid announces the end of class, Felix is relieved. By the end, the reality of what he was doing had started to set in, and Felix could barely look the students – practically _children_ – in the eye as he helped hone skills that would someday see use on a battlefield.

He doesn’t know how Ashe, Ingrid, and Lysithea do it. How had Byleth done it? She’d been right there when each of them spilled first blood, held Annette’s hand while she cried and prayed with Mercedes over shallow graves.

Felix shudders at the thought of doing this for Josephine or any of the children at the orphanage. He’ll take up a sword again himself before he ever lets any of them see battle.

“Thanks for your help, guys,” says Ingrid once the three of them are alone. “That’s all they’re going to talk about for weeks. You’re pretty much heroes to them.”

“I don’t know why,” Felix says. He’s utterly exhausted and just wants to go back to his room. Josephine should be awake by now and asking Annette where he is. “We never did anything special.”

“The real heroes are in the ground,” Sylvain says. His eyes meet Felix’s for a brief moment before he looks away. “I hope you guys teach them about the others as well. Marianne and everyone.”

Ingrid nods, mouth set in a grim line. “We do. Ashe, Lysithea, and me… we’re the only professors from our generation. We understand that they have to learn things from us that they can’t from anyone else.”

The air between them is muted and somber, and it reminds Felix of too many post-battle reunions. He and Sylvain rarely strayed far from one another, so that was never a concern. But going back to their pre-determined meeting point always felt like their own personal hell, because they never knew who they would or wouldn’t find.

Felix is about to excuse himself before he can do something stupid like cry when Ingrid says, “Who wants to spar? I still have a lot of pent-up energy. Felix? Wanna go a round?”

Taken aback, Felix doesn’t know how to respond. His friends used to spend so much time just trying to get him to _leave_ this place. “I’m good,” he says. “I have to get back. I promised Josephine I’d take her to the marketplace after her nap.”

Ingrid fixes Felix with a pointed look before she says, “Well, that’s a lie. Josephine wouldn’t stop talking about how Ferdinand was going to take her riding today. Were you going to the marketplace before or after that?”

It’s with a start that Felix realizes he’s being analyzed. Both Ingrid and Sylvain are watching him, just waiting for him to say something. The rack of swords stands ominously in Felix’s peripheral.

_They noticed._

“Fine,” Felix says frostily. “I lied. I just don’t feel like it.”

“ _You_ don’t feel like sparring?” Ingrid presses. “What alternate reality have I woken up in?”

“The one where you asked me to do something, and I _dared_ to say no.”

“It’s not that big a deal,” Sylvain says. “You guys can duke it out another day, Ingrid.”

Ingrid straightens her back. “No.” She turns away from them, stalking over to the training swords and pulling one free. Abruptly, Felix feels ill, and he takes a step back even as he knows there’s nowhere to run. “I want to fight now. Take up a sword, Felix.”

When she comes to stand before Felix, arm extended with the sword in hand, it almost seems like she’s pleading with him. This could be over if you’ll just take the sword.

And Felix _wants_ to, if only to get Ingrid off his back. He could so easily reach out and take what she’s offering, but he doesn’t know what will happen if he does.

He _can’t_ be like that in front of them. Not Sylvain and Ingrid.

“I said no,” Felix snaps, and Ingrid’s expression tightens.

“Ingrid – ” Sylvain says, voice carrying a note of warning, but he’s ignored.

“What’s wrong with you?” Ingrid asks. “I haven’t seen you with a sword since… since I don’t _know_ when. Why won’t you take it? What’s going on?”

Felix takes another step back as he says, “Why should I? I won’t do it just because you want me to, Ingrid. What the fuck does it matter?”

“Because I’m worried about you! _We’re_ worried about you!” Ingrid’s green eyes are wide and imploring as they bore into Felix’s own, and he has to look away. “If something’s going on, you can tell us, Felix. I can’t explain it, but… I know something’s wrong. Why won’t you talk to us?”

“Is it really the end of the world if I don’t have a sword on my hip?” Felix glances wildly between Ingrid and Sylvain. They’re both looking at him with so much concern, but there’s another layer to Sylvain’s weighted stare that makes Felix feel _sick._ “I don’t carry one because of _Josephine._ What if there’s an accident and she hurts herself?”

Ingrid scoffs. “Like you’d even let that happen. This is _wooden,_ Felix. Just fucking take it!”

Felix snatches the training sword from her and flings it across the room. It hits the wall and falls to the floor with an echoing clatter, but not even that distracts from Felix’s heavy and strangled breathing, or the way he shakes with fear and fury.

Ingrid stands stricken, an apology clearly on the tip of her tongue, but he doesn’t want to hear it. “Felix,” Sylvain says urgently, making an abrupt move toward him, and Felix flinches back, smacking away the hand that reaches out for him.

“Don’t fucking touch me!” he snaps. He desperately wants Josephine, though he knows he can’t see her when he’s like this. “Fuck you, fuck the _both_ of you.”

“It’s okay, Fe, just – ”

Felix sweeps out of the room before he can hear the rest of whatever Sylvain has to say. If they call after him, he doesn’t hear. His working ear is ringing, and the other only ever hears ghosts.

_Stay back, Felix!_

_Be quick about it._

_I couldn’t fucking take it if it’d been you down there._

_Don’t complicate things, Felix._

Felix knew he shouldn’t have come here.


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was originally supposed to be one chapter but uhhh, it was too sad, so I broke it up into parts /hides
> 
> Thank you all so much for you support and lovely comments. Each one genuinely makes my day!

Felix didn’t spend a lot of time in the library when he was in school. He would tag along with Ingrid sometimes, mostly when he was pestering her to join him at the training grounds for a spar. Felix had always been more of a visual learner, so the library itself was of little to no use to him.

These days, he appreciates the quiet. It’s similar enough to the library at home that Felix finds himself wanting to relax, even if he isn’t quite comfortable enough to truly let himself.

Ever since the incident at the training grounds, Felix has spent more and more time up here with Josephine. It’s for her sake alone that he hasn’t completely avoided Ingrid and Sylvain, though he keeps their interactions simple and doesn’t say much. Ingrid seems more than willing to allow him his space for now, but Felix has noticed that Sylvain keeps trying to get him alone. His attempts are easily dodged since Josephine hardly ever leaves Felix’s side, but Felix knows it’s only a matter of time until he’s cornered.

Felix sighs to himself, sliding a book back onto the shelf after having done little more than flip through its pages. It’s late enough that no one is around save for him and Josephine, who is on the ground at Felix’s feet, sitting cross-legged with a book in her lap that’s thicker than her arm. She does this in their home library as well. Her reading comprehension isn’t quite above the level of storybooks, but she likes to feel the paper under her hands.

She makes a game of flipping through more difficult texts to scan them for words she recognizes. Whenever she finds one, she calls excitedly for Felix, seeking affirmation that he’s more than happy to give. Today, she’s been quiet, lips pursed and brow furrowed as she searches for words other than _and, the,_ and _but._

 _A Complete Anthology of the Church of Seiros_ probably wasn’t the best choice for this activity, but Josephine had insisted.

"Saint!” Josephine says suddenly. “Like Saint Seiros.”

“Good job, sweetheart,” Felix says as he pulls down another book. _Traveler’s Journal, Issue 1._ He vaguely remembers being assigned this series in one of Hanneman’s classes before Byleth came. He and Sylvain were the only ones who didn’t read it, and they stayed up in Ashe’s room the night before class letting him describe every passage to them.

“This book is hard, Daddy. I don’t like it.”

Felix hums, quickly flipping through _Traveler’s Journal_ until he reaches the back cover. They used to have to sign their names when they took a book out of the library. Something about accountability. In the past few books he’s pulled, he’s found Ingrid’s, Ashe’s, Claude’s, and even Dimitri’s signatures. It’s so odd to think they’ll be a part of the library’s collection long after having left the monastery. “Do you want me to get you a new one?”

Josephine says something in response. Felix knows she does, but he only hears her distantly, like she’s calling to him from behind a series of closed doors. He can’t tear his eyes away from the sign-out sheet glued to the inside of the back cover.

_Lindhart von Hevring_

~

"Be quick about it.”

Felix says nothing, though he tightens his hand around the hilt of his sword. It wasn’t hard to drive Lindhart to his knees. Edelgard must not run her military like Byleth does. Their professor always assigns a combat unit to the more vulnerable mages and healers if they have the bodies to spare.

Lindhart stares up at him unblinkingly, gaze emotionless and skin a sickly pallor. No words are exchanged between them, but Felix knows that if he does this for his former classmate, Lindhart won’t fight him.

It would be a different story if Felix tried to take him prisoner. Lindhart isn’t the type to be led from the fort in chains, but if Felix decides to end this here and now, the Adrestian mage won’t struggle.

“Do you pray?” Felix asks. His voice comes out like a growl, and Lindhart’s eyes flutter shut at the sound of it.

“Not really,” the man says tiredly. “Not anymore.”

When Lindhart opens his eyes again, Felix places a hand on his shoulder. “I hope you find peace, then,” Felix says. “Whatever that means for you.”

He drives his sword forward, maintaining eye-contact with Lindhart the entire time. Felix owes him that much. They were never friendly, but they wouldn’t have been enemies if it weren’t for Edelgard. So, Felix watches the life drain from Lindhart’s eyes, and when the man slumps against him, Felix carefully lays him down against the ground.

Lindhart’s eyes are still open, and Felix glances up, following his sightless gaze. Wyvern and pegasus riders littler the skies above Fort Merceus, flying in and out of plumes of smoke that rise above the ruins. Felix looks away and reaches out to close Lindhart’s eyes.

Ingrid drops down out of nowhere, her pegasus’ hooves clattering loudly on the stone. His nostrils are flared, snow-white sides heaving dramatically with every breath he takes. Felix doesn’t know this one’s name, if it even has one yet. Ingrid’s last mount died at Gronder, and she’d barely had the time to grieve before she was forced to pick a new one.

Ingrid is sweating profusely, holding Lúin in an iron-lock grip. She jerks her head toward Lindhart. “Is he… ”

“Dead,” Felix says tonelessly. He wipes the blood from his sword against his forearm, staining the fabric of his coat. “I killed him.”

Ingrid’s mouth settles in a firm, grim line, but she doesn’t dwell on his words. “The Professor and His Highness are advancing on the Death Knight. We need you at the front.”

“Where’s Sylvain?” Felix asks gruffly as he stands.

Ingrid’s lips curl like she’d love to snarl at him for his distraction, and her pegasus digs at the ground with a back hoof, shifting his weight in agitation. “Last I saw, he was just east of you. He was heading toward… ”

Her eyes go wide at the same time Felix’s does. She and Seteth had done an arial sweep of the fort before Dimitri led in the first wave. Lindhart had been stationed to the west, and to the east, in the opposite courtyard, was Caspar.

“ _Go_ ,” Felix snaps, nearly tripping over himself in his haste to get across the fort. “I’ll meet you there.”

“Don’t be long,” Ingrid says, but they both know Felix may not make it to the front depending on what he finds.

She takes off, and Felix runs through the soldiers he’d laid low on his path to Lindhart, sword still clutched tightly in his hand. He’s fairly certain they cleared this part of the fort, but he has to have his weapon ready, just in case. Why did it have to be _Caspar_ , of all people? A hand-to-hand specialist whereas Sylvain mostly fights on a mount.

Rosemund isn’t as young as she used to be – not to mention she’ll be weighed down by the armor she wears as a Dark Knight’s mount – but Sylvain refuses to substitute her. Sylvain enjoys diving into fights where he has the disadvantage, and Felix is just as furious as he is terrified.

He shouldn’t have taken his eyes off Sylvain. He shouldn’t have let him go off on his own.

Felix takes the steps two at a time as he approaches the elevated platform where Caspar had been spotted. The first thing he sees is Rosemund, standing off to the side, completely riderless. But before panic can set in, he sees her dip her head to nuzzle into unruly auburn hair. Sylvain is there, and he’s awake. He’s on his knees, the Lance of Ruin discarded at his side, but he’s alive. Before him lies Caspar.

Sylvain is holding his hand.

Felix rushes to him, sheathing his sword despite his better judgment. “Sylvain,” he says urgently, but the other man doesn’t seem to react to his voice. He just stares unblinkingly at Caspar’s body. “What are you doing? There’s still a battle going on.”

Even as he speaks, Felix is pulling and tugging at Sylvain. Checking his armor for cracks or punctures or missing pieces. But aside from some bruising along his jaw, Sylvain seems perfectly fine. “Sylvain,” Felix says again, quieter but no less urgent, and Sylvain jerks under his hands.

“I killed him,” Sylvain says, and Felix searches his face desperately, trying to find even an ounce of emotion and coming up empty. It’s like Sylvain isn’t even there. “Caspar’s dead, Felix.”

Felix nods. He’d been able to tell with only a glance. Whereas Lindhart had stayed mostly clean, Caspar is lying in a pool of his own blood. His stomach is a mess, armor and skin ripped apart. A parting gift from a Hero’s Relic.

“He said Lindhart’s name in the end,” Sylvain says, and in the blink of an eye, his expression has gone wild. It’s a look Felix hates, and he presses closer, wrapping his gloved hands around Sylvain’s armored bicep. “He was crying, and – and he called out for him. Like a child calling his mother.”

Felix shushes him, sliding his hands down to where Sylvain is still gripping Caspar’s hand in his own. “C’mon, Sylvain,” he says quietly, silently urging the other man to let go. “We have to go. Our friends still need us.”

Sylvain shakes his head, and Felix can see that he’s unraveling by the second.

But before either of them can say anything more, they hear Mercedes begin to scream.

They don’t return to Fort Merceus until later, after Annette’s leg has been seen to and Mercedes has stopped wailing. Sylvain has mostly calmed down, keeping quiet but still responding to the people around him, and he helps Felix collect the bodies of the fallen without a word.

Normally, they don’t bother with the Empire’s soldiers. Before, Dimitri would spit and snarl if they even attempted to honor the enemy’s dead, but now it’s more a matter of delegation. Felix, Sylvain, and the other students from the noble houses are too important to waste their time collecting bodies, and Byleth usually tells them to let the members of their battalions handle it.

But not this time. Felix returns for Lindhart while Sylvain collects Caspar, and together, they dig a grave for the two of them just beyond Fort Merceus’ walls. Lindhart and Caspar are far away from their families’ ancestral burial grounds, and it isn’t a proper service by a longshot, but it’s all Felix and Sylvain have to give.

The sight of them lying in the dirt together makes Felix want to throw up. He picks up a shovel, just wanting to be done with it, and waits for Sylvain to do the same. But Sylvain doesn’t move, and for a while, the only sounds around them come from Rosemund’s gentle snuffling from a few feet away.

“What are you doing?” Felix asks when it becomes apparent Sylvain isn’t going to move. “I’m tired. I want to go back to camp.”

Sylvain makes an odd sound in the back of his throat. It sounds like a sob, or perhaps a stifled laugh. “Was Lindhart the same way?” Sylvain asks. Not once does he take his eyes off of their former classmates’ bodies. “Did he ask for Caspar?”

Felix grips the shovel’s handle so tightly he swears he hears the wood splinter. “No,” he says, “but I’m sure he must’ve been thinking of him in the end.”

He doesn’t know if it’s the correct thing to say. He doesn’t know if he should’ve lied.

Eventually, Sylvain reaches for his own shovel.

~

Felix is watching Lindhart’s face disappear underneath the dirt when he feels the book being pried from his hands. He hears his name being called, and Felix blinks, shuddering back into his own body. This is familiar to him now, but he still hates how his body aches, as if his memories are trying to beat their way out of him.

“Felix? Can you hear me?”

With a start, Felix realizes that Sylvain is the one speaking to him, the one prying the book from his hands. It’s hard to make sense of the person he is now with the one Felix sees in his mind’s eye. Felix had loved and hated Sylvain _so much_ back then, and he still doesn’t know if Sylvain understands just how deeply those conflicting emotions had run.

Felix struggles to catch his breath as Sylvain rubs a large hand up and down his back. Sylvain seems just as shaken and winded, huffing in anxious breaths as his whiskey-dark eyes dart all over Felix’s face. “Where’s Josephine?” Felix asks once he has his wits about him.

“She’s with Byleth,” Sylvain says. “I was talking with her in the audience chamber when we heard Frannie calling for help.”

“Don’t let her come back here. She can’t – Not when I’m – ”

Sylvain shushes him, crowding in closer. Felix remembers the last time they’d been this close to one another and feels a rush of bitterness so strong it threatens to choke him. But he doesn’t push Sylvain away. Even if Felix will regret it later, he wants him closer. “She told us,” Sylvain reassures him. “She said she’s not allowed to be around you when you’re like this.”

Sometimes Felix can’t believe how wonderful Josephine is. Felix knows how hard these things are for her. Being away from Felix still gives her anxiety if she’s not with someone she completely trusts, especially if she thinks he’s sad or in pain. Lydia isn’t here to distract her this time, but Josephine listened anyway. Five years old and still following her rules, even though she’s undoubtedly upset.

Sylvain doesn’t speak again until Felix pulls away and gets to his feet. He follows Felix up, keeping close despite the distance Felix is now trying to put between them. “Fe,” Sylvain says, “tell me what’s going on with you. And don’t say that it’s nothing, because I’ve _never_ seen you like that. I couldn’t even tell if you knew I was here.”

Felix turns away. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

For a moment, Felix thinks Sylvain will keep pushing, but all Sylvain does is sigh, running a hand through his artfully tousled hair. “Okay,” he says. “I won’t make you do it now, Fe, but we’re gonna have to talk. No one wants to see you like this.”

Felix bites back a scathing retort, something like how he’ll make sure to have his traumatic episode in peace next time, but he stays his tongue and only nods in response; although Felix would rather run to the ends of the earth before he ever talks about any of this with Sylvain. “I’m going to take Josephine back to our room,” he says. “Thanks for… that.”

Sylvain nods stiffly. There must be so much more he wants to say, but he only follows along quietly as Felix leaves the library.

Felix takes in the uncomfortable silence between them and wonders where they went wrong.

~

Josephine is silent as Felix sets her down on the bed. She’d clung to him all the way down from the audience chamber, hiding her face in his shoulder so no one would see her tears. Clover sits at the door just as quietly, brown eyes attentive as she watches the two of them.

“I’m sorry, sweetheart,” Felix says. “I – I didn’t mean to scare you like that.”

“Daddy can’t help it,” Josephine mumbles. It’s something Lydia has said to her many times before. She’s grown up alongside Felix’s episodes and knows what to do when one occurs, but she’s never gotten any better at handling them. “Can I have Minnie?”

Felix nods, grabbing the doll from where she sits against the pillows. She was easily within Josephine’s reach, but Josephine likes to feel taken care of after a scare like that, and Felix would never fault her for it. “Josephine,” Felix says as his daughter clutches her doll close to her chest. He doesn’t think either of them can go on like this. Nothing short of going home will make Felix feel better, and Josephine will only suffer if his mood continues to worsen. “I know you were excited to spend the whole summer here, but I think we’re going to have to go home early.”

Josephine’s head snaps up at that. “No, I don’t wanna, Daddy!”

Looking down into her blue, pleading eyes, Felix hates that this is the one thing he can’t give her. He can’t stay, nor can she stay without him. “I know you’re disappointed,” he begins, but Josephine screws her eyes shut and shakes her head, kicking her legs against the side of the mattress.

“No, no, no,” she chants. “I wanna stay, I wanna play with everyone. You promised!”

Clover whines by the door, and Felix breathes out roughly through his nose. “I know I did, but – ”

“No! You _promised_!”

“Josephine!” Felix snaps, and she immediately goes still. “That’s _enough._ If I say we’re going home, then that’s what we’re doing. Stop being a brat.”

Felix feels horrified with himself as soon as the words leave his mouth, but it’s already too late. Josephine looks at him as if it’s the first time she’s seeing him, and before Felix can even begin to apologize, her chin trembles, and she bursts into tears.

Felix has _never_ yelled at her like that before, never even come close. He thinks he’s strict when he has to be – though Lydia would say he isn’t strict enough – and he’s gotten better at disciplining Josephine when she’s acting up. But Felix told himself long ago he was going to be better for her, and he tries hard to never speak to her the way Rodrigue spoke to him, or how Anschutz spoke to Sylvain and Miklan.

Felix crouches down before Josephine as she continues to sob. She doesn’t flinch away from him, but her cries get louder, and he feels lower than dirt. “Josephine,” he says shakily, “sweetheart, I’m so sorry.”

“M’not a brat,” Josephine wails, her chest and tiny shoulders bouncing with sobs as she struggles to get the words out. “I’m not!”

“You aren’t, darling, you’re such a good girl. You were so brave today, and – I’m sorry I snapped at you, you didn’t deserve that.”

No matter what Felix says, Josephine is inconsolable, so eventually he gives up. After making sure she won’t try to fight him off, Felix scoops her up and holds her to his chest. And even though he’s the source of her sorrow, Josephine presses her face to his neck like she has since she was a baby, seeking comfort in the best way she knows how.

Felix cries himself while he waits for Josephine to tire herself out, though he’s mostly silent. He rests his cheek atop her head, and her wayward, brunette curls tickle his nose and chin. He thinks about how big she’s gotten, how much she’s changed since the day he found her.

He thinks about how _he_ hasn’t changed at all.

Only when Josephine’s crying has finally tempered to quiet sniffles does Felix speak. “I love you, Josephine,” he says, because he wants to make sure she understands that above all else. “I shouldn’t have snapped at you like that, and I’m very sorry.”

“S’okay, Daddy,” Josephine slurs, still slumped into his chest. “I forgive you. Love you.”

Josephine really is too good for this world. Felix has always thought so, but she just reinforces that every day she’s alive. “I know this isn’t what I promised,” he continues quietly. “I wish things could be different. But I’m… not well, Josephine. It wouldn’t be a good idea for me to stay here any longer.”

“You don’t feel good?”

“No,” Felix says, “not at all. But if you want to stay, I can talk to your aunts and uncles. They can take care of you for the rest of the summer until you’re ready to come home.”

He should’ve given her that option in the first place. It won’t be the end of the world if they’re separated for a time, even if Felix feels like it might be. Felix trusts his friends and knows they would watch Josephine and keep her safe. It’s just hard. They haven’t been apart since Felix pulled Josephine from the ashes of Edelgard’s empire.

To Felix’s surprise, Josephine shakes her head. “No,” she whines. “Wanna stay with you. We can go home so you can feel better.”

“Are you sure? I promise it’s okay if you want to stay here.”

“M’sure.”

And so, just like that night in Enbarr five years ago, Felix takes his daughter and flees.


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *jeon jungkook voice* let's get it

Felix is in his study when Sera comes into the house. “Sylvain Gautier is here,” she tells him, and Felix sighs, nodding to himself. He’d heard hooves on the path leading down to the estate, but he’d hoped it was just Sera and the other stable hands leading some of the horses in from the pasture.

“Send him back,” he says, and Sera disappears again.

Felix stands up from his desk and goes to the window. He sees Jeremiah near the apple tree, head bent low as he nibbles on the grass. Inexplicably, Felix can’t stand the sight of the thing. He wishes Sylvain would just ride Rosemund again.

Sylvain’s footsteps are slow but loud as he makes his way back to the study, and Felix crosses his arms over his chest as he listens, though he stays at the window. “Felix,” he hears eventually. “Whoa… your hair’s down.”

It’s so _not_ what Felix had been expecting to hear that he can’t help but glance over his shoulder. Sylvain is hovering in the doorway, just staring at him. He looks exhausted. “And?” Felix asks, eyebrow raised.

Sylvain blinks. “It’s just long, is all.”

“Why are you here, Sylvain?”

“C’mon, Fe, you know why I’m here,” Sylvain says, sounding slightly cross. As if he has anything to be upset about. “Where’s Frannie?”

“She went to town with Lydia,” Felix tells him. “You can see her when they get back, but after that, I want you and your stupid horse off my property.”

Sylvain snorts, moving further into the room. He drops down into the chair across from Felix’s desk like he does it every day while Felix watches impassively. “Don’t be mean to Jeremiah. He’s got nothing to do with this.”

“Just say whatever you came to say and get out,” Felix hisses. “I left Garreg Mach for a _reason._ If I wanted to talk, I would’ve just stayed. You should’ve left it at that.”

“Nope,” Sylvain says. “I tried to be nice. I was gonna let you sleep it off and talk to you in the morning, but you were gone when I went looking. It was just like before, and I can’t – You’ve gotta stop _running away,_ Felix.”

Felix laughs, and Sylvain’s brow furrows as he looks at him, as if he’s trying to puzzle him out. He used to do that so often when they were children, after Glenn died and Felix resolved to never cry about anything. “What’s going on, Felix?” Sylvain asks. “What was that in the library?”

With a scoff, Felix says, “Don’t patronize me. You know exactly what that was.”

“I want to hear you say it.”

“For the love of – _Why?_ ”

“Is it – ” Sylvain hesitates, indecision marring his features before he seems to come to some conclusion within himself. “Is it like what happened at the training grounds? If you’re struggling with something – ”

“Leave it alone, Sylvain.”

“When Frannie came to get us, she said you were remembering bad things,” Sylvain says softly, and Felix…

Felix breaks.

“ _Fine,_ ” he says, turning away from the window. “I can barely even look at a sword anymore without thinking about all the shitty, fucked up things I did during the war. I read Lindhart’s name in that book and had a fucking _meltdown,_ is that what you want to hear?”

Sylvain appears stricken, much like Ingrid had when Felix threw the sword across the training grounds. It’s probably the most emotion he’s regarded Felix with in years, and Felix revels in it even as he wishes Sylvain would turn a blind eye. “You never told me,” he whispers, standing up from the chair. “Fe, if I’d known – ”

“What, you wouldn’t have spent the past four years in the goddamn desert?” Felix snarls. “How would you have known? How was I supposed to tell you?”

“Your letters – ”

Felix scoffs. He wants to sweep an arm out and knock every single paper and folder off his desk, but he stays his hand. “Fuck my letters. I wasn’t about to tell you I was seeing _ghosts,_ Sylvain. Goddess, I’m no better than the boar, I – ”

When Sylvain reaches out for him, Felix is too distracted to step away. His hands around each of Felix’s biceps feel like shackles, and Felix flinches, mouth snapping shut. “Dimitri is _sick,_ Felix,” Sylvain says fiercely. “He’ll _always_ be sick, and that isn’t his fault. You’re just traumatized, alright? And that isn’t your fault either. All of us, we should’ve been there for you – ”

“Yeah, maybe you should’ve,” Felix says, even as he knows he wouldn’t have let any of them close enough to try and help. “It doesn’t matter now. I’ve been like this for years, and I’ve been handling it just fine.”

Sylvain’s expression hardens as he says, “It’s not _fine_ when your kid daughter is screaming for someone to help you. Is that routine for her, Felix? Why did she sit there crying and tell us she had to wait for you to come back like that was normal?”

Felix doesn’t hit Sylvain, but it’s a close thing. Instead, he looks him dead in the eye and says, “Why does it bother you so much? She only did for me what I had to do for you.”

Sylvain’s eyes go wide, and Felix feels every inch of Sylvain’s hands slipping down his arms until they fall limp at his sides. “Do _you_ know what it’s like to watch while someone you love slips away?” Felix continues, even as Sylvain steps away from him. “To just _sit_ there and hope they’ll come back to you? I always come back for Josephine, so what the fuck was your excuse?”

“Felix,” Sylvain says, but he doesn’t continue. He keeps moving away until the backs of his knees hit the chair, and when he falls into it, the chair creaks under his weight. Sylvain seems winded, and Felix wonders if he’ll be able to get back up again. “ _Fe_.”

“Stop,” says Felix, closing his eyes. He remembers being young and small, all alone at the estate until Sylvain came calling. No one else ever gave him a nickname. There was only ever Sylvain. “Just – Just stop it, Sylvain.”

Sylvain stares at him long and hard, but after a while, Felix thinks he sees Sylvain starting to crumble.

Felix can count the number of times he’s seen Sylvain cry on one hand, and it never gets any easier. The first time was a few days after Miklan pushed him down the well at their family home. Sylvain was stuck for hours before anyone even noticed he was missing, and Felix had begged Glenn to take him to Gautier as soon as he heard about what had happened.

They’d been ten and twelve at the time. Sylvain had started to pull away by then, bogged down by terrible burdens Felix was only just starting to become aware of, but as soon as Felix appeared in his bedroom doorway, Sylvain started _wailing_.

“He was really gonna kill me, Fe.” Sylvain’s words were muffled into Felix’s scrawny shoulder, but Felix had still felt every word like a punch to the stomach. “I thought I was gonna die.”

And Felix had cried as well, terror-stricken at the idea of waking up in a world without Sylvain Gautier. “Not without me,” he’d sobbed. “I won’t let you.”

The second time was after Fort Merceus. They’d buried Lindhart’s and Caspar’s bodies and rode back to camp in total silence, but when Sylvain had tried to escape to his own tent, Felix wouldn’t let him. He’d sensed something terrible in Sylvain ever since he found him holding onto Caspar’s hand, and Felix wasn’t about to let the older man out of his sight until he figured out what it was.

Sylvain was impassive as Felix led him to his own tent. He went through the motions of removing his armor when Felix told him to and didn’t fight when Felix pushed him down onto his cot. It was only meant for a single person, but Felix was determined.

And there in the dark, Felix had taken Sylvain’s face between his hands and asked him what was wrong.

“Everything,” Sylvain told him. “What isn’t wrong, Felix?”

 _Call me Fe,_ Felix thought, but he couldn’t say it. They weren’t children anymore, and Felix refused to take more from Sylvain than he’d already given. “We’re alive. Isn’t that enough?”

“I don’t care,” Sylvain replied, and that was when the tears came. He shook so hard Felix thought he might fall apart if he let him go. “I don’t care if I live to see the end of this war, or to see Dimitri crowned. I _don’t._ ”

“Don’t say that,” Felix begged him. “You – You can’t _say that_ to me – ”

“I couldn’t take it, Fe,” Sylvain whimpered. It was what Felix wished for, and yet it was the worst thing he’d ever heard. “I couldn’t fucking take it if it had been you down there.”

Felix thought he understood what Sylvain meant. He’d felt the same way ever since he learned that Caspar had died with Lindhart’s name on his tongue. In that moment, with the both of them flayed raw by the day’s events, Sylvain had allowed Felix closer than ever before. And surely, Felix thought as they dried one another’s tears, _surely_ they had finally managed to bridge the gap between them that Felix had been struggling to close for years, entirely on his own.

But when morning came, Felix was shocked to find himself alone in a cot gone cold, and he wondered if he’d ever understood Sylvain at all. The gaping emptiness he felt threatened to consume him, and he dressed in a desperate flurry before rushing out of his tent to find Sylvain. He’d wanted answers, and he demanded them when he found Sylvain soon after, casually feeding Rosemund her breakfast.

Sylvain had only offered him a small, empty smile. “Yesterday was just a lot, y’know? Don’t complicate things, Felix.”

There was nothing Felix could say to that.

So, Felix did what he did best, picking himself up and moving on despite his nagging suspicion that nothing would ever be good again.

He was on the front-line in every battle. He watched Sylvain’s back when the man who broke his heart purposefully left it unguarded, and he didn’t complicate things.

Felix lost nearly every soldier in his battalion, watched Ingrid kill the woman she loved, became partially deaf, and _didn’t dare complicate things._

And when the war was nearly won, and Felix was left wondering if he would even have a place in the new, peaceful world they had bled for, he followed the sound of a crying infant. And in an _instant,_ everything that came before that was rendered obsolete.

This is the third time Felix will watch Sylvain as he cries, and he hopes it’ll be the last. Even so, he takes it all in as Sylvain’s eyes grow redder with each moment of silence that passes between them. He doesn’t look away when the tears finally slip down Sylvain’s face.

Just like with Lindhart, Felix has nothing left to give aside from his complete attention.

“I’m sorry, Felix,” Sylvain chokes out. He’s finally hurting just as much as Felix had, but it doesn’t make anything better. “I don’t – You’ll never know how _sorry_ I am.”

“You could’ve told me,” says Felix. “You talk so much but never say a damn thing. Not when it matters.”

Sylvain drags his hands across his face, jaw flexing as he struggles to keep himself together. Felix knows he should probably stop, but if this is the last time he’ll get to be completely honest with Sylvain, he’s going to take advantage of it. “I gave you everything,” Felix says. “ _Everything_ about myself. And you threw it back in my face every time. It’s not like I expected a thank you. I probably would’ve punched you if you tried. But it would’ve been nice to know if you even cared that I stuck around.”

“I cared,” Sylvain says. He’s full-on sobbing now, but Felix won’t let himself go to him. “Felix, you were the only thing I cared about for so long.”

Felix feels like screaming. Why does it take this much just to earn Sylvain’s honesty? “How was I supposed to know that? For five straight years, all you did was fuck and drink and try to get yourself killed. You always said you fought like you wanted to die, and no one took you seriously except for _me._ Should I not have bothered, Sylvain? Should I have acted like I couldn’t see through you and just let you die in a fucking trench somewhere?”

Distantly, Felix knows he’s being cruel. In some ways, it’s like he’s watching and listening from outside of himself, yelling at this person who’s stolen his body to stop hurting everyone around him. But it’s only ever been him. Just Felix.

“Did you know?” Felix asks, because they both need this to end.

Sylvain has to take a moment before replying. His entire face is wet, his eyes red and lashes clumped together with tears. Felix has always thought Sylvain was beautiful, but he’s an ugly crier. “Know what?”

“That I was in love with you.”

Sylvain shudders and whimpers like he did the night they buried Lindhart and Caspar. “Yes,” he chokes out. “I knew. Of course, I knew.”

Felix thinks he should be angry. And he is, but it’s a muted, tired anger barely worth feeling. “Okay,” he breathes. “I think you should go now.”

Sylvain actually laughs as he digs his palms into his eyes. It leaves them even redder than before, and when he glares at Felix in the aftermath, he looks like a blotchy, wrathful ghost. “No,” he says forcefully before laughing again. “You’re gonna say all that shit to me and then not even let me respond? What the hell _,_ Felix?”

“Josephine and Lydia will be back soon,” Felix says tonelessly. “If you want Josephine to hear us screaming at one another, then go ahead. Say what you have to say.”

Sylvain gapes at him for a long moment, and he comes off as a shell of a person, laid low by Felix’s words and accusations. He’d seemed so healthy at Garreg Mach, tanned and smiling like they were careless students again, and all Felix has done is drag him back down to his level.

Felix already knew they’d grown too far apart to ever find one another again, but it hurts to see the evidence of it so clearly on Sylvain’s face.

Sylvain huffs, brow furrowed as he wipes his nose with the back of his hand. “Fine, I’ll go,” he says, tears still streaming down his face, and Felix, who’d been expecting more of a fight, can only stare. “But I’ll be back, Felix, because this isn’t you.”

“Sylvain, I already told you – ”

“I get that you’re hurting,” Sylvain interrupts him, sounding stuffed and nasally from crying. “Really. I was in your place before, and I know it fucking sucks. You wanna lash out at everyone and then tell yourself you’re better off alone. Fine. I’ll leave and do what I have to do and let you work things out on your own, and you can go and tell Lydia I’m banned from the property. But she loves you too damn much to let you do that to yourself, and I’ll keep coming back because _I_ love you too much to let things end like this.”

Felix has no earthly idea what’s going on anymore. Sylvain has gone from defeated to fierce in the span of a few minutes, and he looks so much like the person Felix adored when they were children.

“We’re not done yet, Fe,” Sylvain says, and it sounds like a promise.

~

If Felix was tired and despondent before Sylvain came, his emotional state does a complete one-eighty after he’s gone. The more he sits and thinks about what happened, the angrier Felix becomes. He doesn’t like not knowing what to expect, and Sylvain’s parting words unsettled him to his core.

Because Felix had already decided that they were done. Whatever they were, whatever relationship they could have had, was better left in the past. Felix was Duke now. He had a territory to protect, a household of his own, and a daughter to raise. The years he’d spent chasing after Sylvain were over and done with, and after everything he’d said, Felix thought Sylvain would’ve figured that out.

But Sylvain – stubborn, obnoxious, intelligent, _beautiful_ Sylvain – said they weren’t done. He said he would be back, and Felix doesn’t know what he wants anymore.

It takes a week for Felix to receive any sort of news. He spent his time in bed mostly on Lydia’s insistence. He’s only allowed to see Josephine for a short while each morning and evening, and as much as it pains him, the arrangement is probably for the best. Felix hasn’t felt like himself since the day he and Josephine arrived at Garreg Mach, and he’s determined to get back to a place where he can spend time with her without worrying about when he’ll explode.

Felix will do anything to get there, even if he hates being on bedrest and reflection.

On the 12th of Garland Moon, a week after Sylvain’s visit, Felix feels well enough to join Josephine for breakfast. She screams at the sight of him out of his room and nearly stomps on Clover’s tail in her mad dash to latch onto Felix’s legs. She cries and cries while Lydia looks on, smiling even as she continues to mediate their interactions. Felix manages to smile back at her without it feeling forced, and he thinks that it’ll be a good day for them all.

Lydia suggests they go outside after breakfast, and Felix sits with his back against the apple tree while Josephine runs around with Clover. Lydia sits at his side, skirts tucked underneath her as she goes through the household budget for the next moon, and Felix’s heart abruptly feels too big for his chest as he watches her.

“Don’t look at me like that,” Lydia says.

“Like what?”

“Like you’re going to thank me.” She fixes him with a weary look, graying hair falling into her eyes, and part of Felix wants to laugh. “I won’t hear it from you, Felix. You just sit there and enjoy the breeze like you’re owed.”

Felix shakes his head but does as she says. Not long after, a shadow moves over Josephine and Clover, and Felix’s daughter tilts her head up toward the sky, squinting through the bright rays of the midmorning sun. “Auntie Ingrid,” she gasps, and Felix practically jumps to his feet.

When Eclipse lands, it’s a safe distance away from Josephine. Neither he nor his rider are wearing any armor, so Felix doesn’t panic just yet. Ingrid hops down off her pegasus’ back gracefully, a smile on her face as Josephine rushes forward to give her a hug. Felix takes his time, weary with his own approach, and he’s thankful for Lydia’s warmth at his back.

“Felix,” Ingrid says when he’s close enough. She’s dressed in plainclothes, a blue tunic and beige pants tucked into her riding boots. She isn’t wearing any makeup, and her windswept hair is only pulled back by a single ribbon. It’s the simplest Ingrid has looked in a very long time, and Felix doesn’t know what to make of it. “I’m sorry to just drop by unannounced like this. I wanted to talk to you about… well, about everything that happened, but I wasn’t sure if I should write a letter or just wait for you to reach out – ”

“Ingrid,” Felix gently interrupts her rambling, “it’s fine. I’m glad you came. You know you’re always welcome here.”

Ingrid lets out a long breath, offering Felix a small smile. “Okay. I’m still sorry for not writing ahead, but I was coming from Gautier, so I thought – ”

“Wait.” Felix frowns, staring at Ingrid in confusion. “Why were you in Gautier?”

Ingrid’s mouth snaps shut. She glances back and forth between Felix and Lydia in obvious confusion. “You… didn’t hear?”

It’s the wrong thing to say, although Ingrid couldn’t have possibly known. It’s just that, for a moment, Felix is terrified that Sylvain’s final outburst had been a façade, that Felix’s words had pushed him right over the edge in a way his own family and the war hadn’t managed.

“What?” he croaks, only semi-aware of Lydia taking hold of Josephine’s hand to gently lead her away. “What happened? Is Sylvain okay? Is he – ”

Ingrid raises her hands in a placating gesture, though she doesn’t touch him. “Oh, no, Felix, Sylvain is fine! I just thought you would’ve heard by now.”

“Heard _what,_ Ingrid?”

“Sylvain overthrew his father, Felix,” Ingrid says. “He’s the Margrave now.”


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This will probably mark the end of my daily update spree. I wanted to at least get to the start of sylvix's reconciliation before I go back to focusing on my schoolwork. I'll try to update more frequently than I was before until we reach the end of this fic. 
> 
> Thank you all so much again for your kind words and encouragement! It's made this week a really fun one for me <3

On the 21st of Blue Sea Moon, Sylvain comes back to Fraldarius.

It was a long, few weeks with little to no word from _anyone._ Felix pestered Ingrid endlessly for the short time she stayed at the estate, but no matter how much he pressed, she wanted nothing to do with his questions. “Just talk to Sylvain when he comes back, Felix,” Ingrid told him before she left. “And please, _please_ listen to what he has to say.”

So, Felix waits, and he wonders, and he nearly goes mad with it until the day he hears the sound of someone riding up to the estate.

Felix is already at the door before Sylvain has even finished tying Jeremiah’s lead to the apple tree. If Sylvain is surprised to see Felix standing there, none of it shows on his face. He seems entirely normal as he walks up to the house, but when he’s close enough, Felix spots a new accessory on Sylvain’s right pointer finger.

It’s the ring the Margrave used to wear, the one with the Gautier crest. The same ring Sylvain had once said he would rather pawn off than ever wear. “Hey, Fe,” Sylvain greets him, as if he hasn’t uprooted Felix’s entire existence in the span of a single moon. “Told you I’d be back.”

“You took your time,” Felix says, stepping aside to let Sylvain into the house. “I’ve heard you’ve been busy.”

Sylvain snorts. “Yeah, that’s putting is mildly. Is Frannie around this time?”

“She’s napping. So… ” Felix hesitates, unsure of what to say. “Let’s try not to yell at one another, I guess.”

Sylvain nods. “I think we can manage that.”

Instead of the study, Felix leads Sylvain to the parlor. Aside from its close proximity to Josephine’s room, Felix hasn’t been in there since the day he exploded at Sylvain. There’s something terribly upsetting about sitting behind that desk in silence, and Felix had only lasted five minutes when he’d tried to go back to work in there.

Sylvain doesn’t question him, just following where Felix leads. The estate is quiet aside from the sound of their footsteps. Everyone mostly ceases activity when Josephine is napping since she’s a notoriously light sleeper, though Felix thinks he can hear the cook shuffling around in the kitchen, preparing the day’s lunch.

When they reach the parlor, Felix sinks down onto the closest couch. He watches Sylvain pensively, relieved when Sylvain sits on the couch opposite him instead of beside him. “So, I guess you heard,” Sylvain says, clasping his hands together and leaning forward with his elbows on his knees. “About what I did.”

“I heard you overthrew your father, yes,” Felix replies. “Ingrid told me.”

When Sylvain smiles, it’s a small and somber thing. “Sorry I didn’t tell you beforehand. I wasn’t sure if you’d try to stop me or not.”

“Why would I stop you?”

“Oh, c’mon, Fe,” Sylvain says, though it isn’t unkind. “What happened to all your honesty from last time?”

Felix shifts uncomfortably, crossing his legs at the knee. “Fine,” he says. “I would’ve stopped you because… what the hell, Sylvain? You’ve never once wanted to be the Margrave. Why would you do that to yourself after… after _everything_?”

“You know, I thought the same thing after I heard you’d accepted your own title,” Sylvain remarks. “I’m sure you had your reasons just like I had mine. I guess we’ve both just changed a lot from before.”

Felix has nothing to say to that, because the older man is entirely correct. Neither of them wanted anything to do with their families’ legacy until after they saw the war to its end. Whether their change of hearts was a positive or negative thing, however, Felix still isn’t sure.

Sylvain sighs, pushing himself up until he’s leaning heavily against the back of the couch. He seems so, so tired, even more so than before, and Felix’s chest aches. “I was gonna wait until the end of the summer,” Sylvain says. “But things changed, obviously. I knew it couldn’t wait any longer when I saw how you were at the monastery.”

Felix frowns. “Don’t tell me you did this for _my_ benefit. That doesn’t make any sense.”

“I disagree,” Sylvain says with a slight chuckle. “But I had other reasons, too. Part of our pending non-aggression pact with the Sreng hinged on my becoming the Margrave. Those guys hate my old man almost as much as I do, and for a lot longer as well.”

“So, Anschutz just stepped down when you told him to?” Felix asks with a quirked brow. “What, did you ask him nicely?

Sylvain snorts. “Yeah, right. I thought he was going to wring my neck when I showed up and told him he either needed to retire or be led out by my men. But I had the support of the Sreng Warlord, all the chiefs, and Dimitri and Byleth. Not to mention the staff at the estate and the people in the township have always preferred me over him. My father was pissed off, of course, but he knew better than to fight me at that point.”

How anticlimactic an end, Felix muses, for a man who caused so much discord and suffering within his own family. Miklan is probably laughing it up from Hell. “But like I said,” Sylvain continues with a heavy sigh, “you played a big part as well, Fe. I just… I couldn’t keep letting you do this by yourself anymore. Not after seeing what it was doing to you with my own eyes.”

Felix’s lip curls as he says, “So, you sold your soul because you pitied me? I never asked you to do that.”

“I know you didn’t. This was a decision I made entirely on my own after thinking it over for nearly four years.” Sylvain gazes at him evenly, and despite the distance and a coffee table between them, Felix suddenly feels as if they’re inches apart. “You were a big part of why I even went to Sreng in the first place.”

Felix opens his mouth, but no sound comes out. He wants to call bullshit so badly, but even he can’t ignore that look on Sylvain’s face, so earnest and open. The best thing Felix can do in this situation is just sit quietly and listen.

When Felix remains silent, Sylvain goes on. “When I woke up that morning in Enbarr, and everyone said they couldn’t find you… Goddess, it was awful, I was basically running around like a madman. I got so reckless, and I led Annette and Ashe right into a group of survivors from the Empire’s army.” Sylvain smiles ruefully, gesturing toward the scar on his face. “That’s how I got this. I was so out of my mind, I took a spear right to the face and barely even felt it.”

Stomach turning, Felix lets his eyes wander over the mark, so much paler now than it had been four years ago. Sylvain had told him a version of this story before, but of course he’d chosen to leave out most of the important details. The _one_ time Felix hadn’t been with him, and Sylvain had ended up permanently maimed.

“It’s not your fault,” Sylvain says, as if reading Felix’s mind. “I was the one who couldn’t keep it together. I wasn’t ready to be apart from you, even if I knew you could barely stand the sight of me. The war was over, and you were gone, and I just… I didn’t know what to do.”

Sylvain lowers his gaze to the floor. His overall energy is quiet, muted. He seems to be deep in thought, lost in his memories of events long past, and Felix wonders if this is how he looks during his milder episodes.

“That first moon after the war was the hardest,” Sylvain admits quietly. “I was recovering from my injury with my parents as my only company. I drank all the time so Mother would get annoyed and just leave me the fuck alone. Goddess, I was so hungover that day I decided to write you that first letter. When you didn’t respond, I seriously thought I was gonna die.”

“Sylvain,” Felix says. He can’t help himself. “You don’t have to tell me all of this.”

“I _want_ to, is the thing,” Sylvain replies. “But if you’d rather not hear it, I can stop. I don’t have to tell you everything now.”

It doesn’t sound as if he cares either way, but Felix knows Sylvain better than that. This is the most candid he’s ever been, and even if it’s coming a few years too late, Felix no longer has the heart to turn him away. This is a side of Sylvain that he hasn’t seen in a very long time, and Felix understands the gravity of it all.

“No,” he says quietly. “Keep going.”

“I missed you, is the thing,” Sylvain admits. “And I knew I had to pull myself together if I ever wanted to be close to you again, so I practically begged Dimitri to give me something to do _._ Anything to get me out of that house before I ended up offing myself. When he mentioned wanting to mend our relations with Sreng, I jumped at the chance. I knew I’d be gone for a long time, but that was better than sitting around and hating myself for ruining my relationship with you.”

“Why’d you do it?” Felix asks. He hates how vulnerable it makes him feel, but that’s the only other thing he really wants to know. It’s the one thing in all this that he’s never been able to make sense of. “I felt like every time I tried to reach out to you, you pulled even further away.”

Sylvain’s brow furrows, and his eyes seem to shine dangerously, although he doesn’t cry. “I just… I couldn’t handle the thought of people caring for me, not when I despised myself so much. Because no matter what I did, you and the others were still there. Being hated by those girls I messed around with? That, I could make sense of.”

“I was the odd one, then. I loved you, and you couldn’t handle it.”

Sylvain winces. “Yeah, you could say that. You were all I had, but I knew I wasn’t good for you. I know now that I wasn’t thinking clearly, but back then, I thought if I made you hate me like the others, you would be better off.”

Felix feels a rush of anger so strong that his entire body shivers. Sylvain must catch it as he eyes Felix with wary concern. “I had wondered,” Felix says. “You were more self-sabotaging than anyone I’ve ever known. I just wrongly assumed that didn’t extend to your relationship with me.”

“It didn’t, not for a while,” Sylvain replies. “But the war messed me up. I could barely see in front of my own nose, but what I did see was you, Felix. With each day that went by, I started caring less and less about surviving, but you never stopped trying to protect me. I wanted you to live, at least, so I _had_ to push you away.”

 _You didn’t have to do anything,_ Felix thinks but doesn’t say. He knows if Sylvain had told him any of this back then, he wouldn’t have understood. In Felix’s mind, surviving was the most important thing, even beyond the Kingdom’s victory in the war. Removing himself from the sides of the people he cared about had been unthinkable, and to hear these words fall from Sylvain’s lips would’ve felt like a betrayal.

But now, Felix thinks he understands. He’s no stranger to chaotic and irrational behavior, and considering the life Sylvain has had, it makes sense that he would’ve come to these conclusions. He’d been tugged back and forth between self-assuredness and self-loathing his entire life, and when placed in a situation that was literally life or death, Sylvain made certain decisions – whether consciously or unconsciously – to protect himself.

Knowing this doesn’t lessen the sting of what happened, and Felix doubts he’ll ever _truly_ be able to forget how often his trust had been betrayed. But Sylvain is here now, as real and present and honest as he’s ever been, and that has to count for something.

“I regretted it,” Sylvain says, expression pained. “Every day for those moons before Dimitri and Byleth’s wedding, I thought about all the horrible things I did and said to you. To _you,_ Felix, the only person who’s ever loved me just because.”

“Not _just because_ , you asshole,” Felix grumbles, crossing his arms over his chest. He turns his face away, glaring out the window to where some of his horses are grazing in the distance. “You make it sound like I had a choice.”

“Didn’t you?” Sylvain asks, though he sounds a little miserable. “There were better options.”

Felix shakes his head. He can’t believe he’s about to admit to this, but he supposes Sylvain deserves something in return for his candidness. “Not to me.”

“Oh. Well.” He can’t see Sylvain’s face, though he knows whatever expression he’s wearing must be truly comical. “I guess I’m no better. I had all those women throwing themselves at me, but the only person I wanted was my grumpy childhood best friend.”

Felix stiffens at that before forcing himself to relax. “You’re much better at expressing yourself now.”

“I had a lot of time for contemplation while I was in Sreng,” Sylvain says with a low chuckle. “Things are simpler there. They don’t worry about bloodlines or crests or any of that shit. Those in positions of power had to earn it through strength or wisdom or reputation. It’s not perfect by any means, but seeing how they live put a lot of things into perspective for me.”

“Josephine has always wanted to go there,” Felix comments. “She’s grown up with your letters, so Sreng is like a mystical wonderland to her.”

“I’d be more than happy to take her someday,” Sylvain says, but then his expression becomes complicated in a way Felix can’t quite explain. “Frannie told me you read those to her pretty much every night.”

Felix feels exposed somehow, although this wasn’t something he’d purposefully been trying to hide. “I’ve used them to teach her to read,” he admits softly. “They hold her attention better than most things. Receiving a letter from you or Elizabet makes her day.”

“I didn’t know what to say when she told me. Did I ever tell you I almost cried the first time she wrote back to me?”

“Why would you have told me that?” Felix asks, though he’s laughing. Josephine had only just turned three when she first asked to write back to Sylvain. Her talking points were rudimentary and inconsequential, but it made her happy to communicate with the person she’d always known but had never seen.

“Yeah, you’re right. I went on and on about it to Ingrid though. Frannie was probably the only good thing we talked about in our early letters.”

Felix tilts his head. He hadn’t known Ingrid and Sylvain kept in contact in any meaningful way while Sylvain was gone. When they were still students, Ingrid held an obvious contempt for the way Sylvain carried himself, unwilling to just ignore his antics like Felix and Dimitri. During the war, she had grown to worry about Sylvain nearly as much as Felix had, but their relationship was never as close as it had been when they were small children.

“We were pretty much doomsday buddies for a couple years,” Sylvain continues. “I waxed poetic about how I made you fall out of love with me, and she told me to get over myself since I hadn’t lost two loves like she had. And she went on and on about how she deserved to die alone after what she did to Dorothea.”

“Goddess, Ingrid,” Felix says, feeling pained.

Sylvain nods, expression somber. He’s quiet for a minute as his eyes dart over Felix’s face, and Felix says nothing as he lets him. “We all struggled,” Sylvain says eventually. “We’re all _still_ struggling. So, you don’t have to feel ashamed for reacting to certain things the way you do. We were just kids, you know?”

Just kids. Practically babies, for all Felix cares. They’d been bred and raised for battle, but Edelgard’s war had caught them entirely unawares. Felix has wondered often what he would do if, someday, Josephine ended up in a similar situation. If she were in mortal peril of some unforeseen kind, far from home where Felix couldn’t protect her.

Rodrigue was better than him. At least he knew how to let go.

Whatever expression is on Felix’s face is enough to drive Sylvain to his feet, and before Felix can tell him not to, Sylvain is settling down at his side. He slides an arm around Felix’s shoulders, tugging him close; despite everything, Felix finds that he doesn’t want to push the man away.

“I hate this,” Felix says through gritted teeth. “I _hate_ being weak.”

“You’re easily the strongest person I know, Fe,” Sylvain says, so close to Felix’s ear. “But even you need help sometimes, and that’s okay.”

Does Felix need Sylvain’s help? Probably. For years, with little to no contact or engagement from Anschutz, Felix has felt as if he’s been holding the north on his own. He’s worried over the state of Gautier’s orphanages since he can’t check in on them as often as he does the ones in Fraldarius. Apparently, they had fallen almost completely into Lady Gautier’s hands, and the Sisters had honestly told him that while the Margrave’s wife was cold with the children, she always made sure they had everything they needed.

It’s entirely what Felix would have expected from a woman who raised sons like Miklan and Sylvain, but Felix has always wanted more for those children.

“So, what now?” Felix asks, desperate for a subject change. “We’re allies with Sreng?”

“More like non-aggressive acquaintances, but it’s a start,” Sylvain says, grinning when Felix huffs out a laugh. “Within the next year or so we’ll have official travel and trade routes. But one of their other conditions had to do with the land they lost in the last war.”

Felix scoffs. “I don’t give a shit what happens to it. No civilians live that far north, and having those outposts is a waste of money and resources. If the Sreng want control of the entire mountain range back, they can have it.”

“I figured you’d say that,” Sylvain says, “but I didn’t want to promise them anything without speaking with you first. Dimitri had his reservations, but Byleth and I talked him into it. So, if you’re in agreement, we can start the process of shifting the border.”

Felix wonders what Rodrigue would think of their decision, if he would’ve made the same one had he been alive. “What did your father have to say about it? I’m sure it’s the ultimate humiliation for him since he fought for that territory.”

Sylvain laughs at that. “You should’ve seen the look on his face, Fe. He told me we were destroying his legacy.”

“And what did you say?”

“That it was absolutely my pleasure,” Sylvain says lowly, voice a rumbling purr that makes Felix shiver. If Sylvain notices – which he surely must – he doesn’t point it out. “And then I told him to take Mother to their villa in Gideon and to never show up at the estate again unless they were invited. Goddess, it felt wonderful.”

Sylvain seems genuinely happy and pleased with recent events. Felix still has trouble reconciling with the fact that Sylvain would’ve rather died than become Margrave just a few years ago, but like Felix had told Sylvain when he saw him at the monastery’s greenhouse: things change.

“You’re the Margrave,” Felix says quietly, eyes fixated on their knees. “I still can’t quite believe it.”

“It takes some getting used to,” Sylvain replies. “But I get to help you now, _and_ I was able to put my father in his place, so I think it’s already worth it.”

“If you get in my way at all… ” Felix warns, though it’s half-hearted.

Sylvain laughs, shaking his head. “Don’t worry, I’ll defer to you for a while. You have more experience anyway. Just watch out for the day I get my bearings though.”

“We’ll see.”

Sylvain looks as if he’s about to say something else, but the parlor door begins to creak open before he can, startling the both of them. Felix cranes his neck to look around Sylvain, and a smile spreads across his face when he sees Josephine peaking her head around the corner.

“Daddy?” she calls, and Felix can tell just from her voice that she’s still a little groggy. “M’done napping.”

“Hi, sweetheart,” Felix says. “Guess who came to see you.”

Josephine steps further into the room, rubbing at her eye with a small fist. Minnie is tucked into her elbow, and Clover is following along just behind Josephine, shadowing her every move. “Hey, Frannie,” Sylvain says, removing his arm from around Felix’s shoulders. “How was your nap?”

“Sylvain,” Josephine says, slow and warm and happy. “It was good.”

Felix watches as Josephine comes over to him, and he helps her crawl up into his lap, running his fingers through her sleep-wild curls. “I can tell Clover’s grown a little,” Sylvain comments, leaning over to pat the Aegir Hound’s head. She leans up into his hand, tail wagging so fast it’s nearly a blur. “She’ll be as big as you soon, Frannie.”

Josephine yawns, resting her head on Felix’s shoulder. “Is Sylvain staying, Daddy?”

Felix shrugs, glancing at Sylvain uncertainly. It doesn’t seem right for Sylvain to just leave after this. There’s still so much to sort out between them, but Felix doesn’t think he has the energy to hash everything out today, or even tomorrow. “I’m staying,” Sylvain answers for him, quirking an eyebrow at Felix like he expects him to argue. “I came to help your dad out, and I’m sticking around until he doesn’t need me anymore.”

Josephine squirms excitedly, undoubtedly thinking of all the games the three of them can play together.

And Felix… well, Felix hopes that, for Sylvain's sake, he isn't just feeding them pretty words.


End file.
